Chores, chores, chores

Note on pictures: We apologize for the recent dearth of pictures. Since we have arrived in Tirur, we have had to do all our emailing, blogging, and web-surfing at a local Internet cafe. The staff is wonderfully friendly but the broadband is unreliable. With that said, this is an image of the outside of our Tirur apartment, uploaded on a day when the broadband was relatively swift.

To keep our sanity, Jenna and I have found it necessary to begin doing ‘chores’ around our apartment.

I think I have mentioned in previous blog posts the state of decrepitude in which we found our residence upon arrival to Tirur more than a week ago.

Cobwebs hung suspended from every corner of every room. Dark metastasizing mold stains ran along the baseboards in the kitchen and living room. The windows, when closed, revealed a gauzy layer of grime which made the outside world look as if it was shrouded in perpetual mist. Scuffmarks blackened the walls in our bedroom. And every pillow overturned, every dish picked up, every door opened, and every sundry item of rubbish kicked, produced a scampering insect of some sort.

To battle this situation, Jenna and I have resorted to chores. We find it necessary every day to do some bit of cleaning: sweeping a floor, dusting a shelf, wiping down a mirror, washing a sink basin, disinfecting a countertop. But these duties are ancillary to our main tasks each morning.

When we wake up, both of us have some jobs to do before we leave for school. After a morning cup of tea, I start on the small load of laundry I began soaking the previous night. Since we have no washing machine—and India is totally bereft of Laundromats—we have become quite accustomed to doing our laundry by hand. Most guesthouses and hotels will come equipped with a large plastic basin in the bathroom, which can be used for both washing clothes and bathing in the Indian style.

In Tirur, we have found it easer to do our laundry in short constant bursts than one great all-consuming cycle of dirty clothes. So, each day, we will place the clothes we wore to school in a bucket of sudsy water to let soak overnight. In the mornings, it is my job to take these clothes out, wring them, and hang them in the spare bedroom on a clothesline we fashioned from the window grates to the doorframe. In this way, we have learned that most cotton shirts, underwear and socks take a full eight hours to dry under the wind of a ceiling fan. Long pants take two days to dry. And towels take four.

As I do the laundry, Jenna begins preparing the day’s lunch. We are forced to make our lunch in the mornings because we have no refrigerator. Microwaveable lunches—the type that I used to eat quite frequently during work in the US—are nonexistent in Tirur’s markets. Plus, the school does not have a microwave anyway. So, we must make meals from scratch, with an experimental zest that defies most Indian culinary traditions. Chop some potatoes and okra, throw in some garlic, add some turmeric and cumin. There you go. We have gotten in the habit of stopping by a small grocery stand near our apartment on the way back from work each day and buying the assorted ingredients. Our inexperience in cooking gives us bravery in buying these items. And our desperation allows us to ignore the skeptical looks we get from the other customers who spy the odd mixture of things in our basket.

Jenna starts the morning cooking usually around 7:30, by chopping some vegetables while a pot of rice boils. After the rice is done, she usually adds an improvisatory mixture of Indian spices to a pan of oil. “What do you think? Will masala with turmeric and salt be good?” she might ask me. “I dunno. Sure,” I usually respond. After this, she throws all the veggies in with the rice and spices and lets it simmer.

While she is completing our lunch, I have moved on to ‘making water’. Since we were told not to trust tap water in Tirur, I use the water purifier bought at the Bass Pro Shop nearly every day to filter three bottles of water. This process involves dipping a plastic tube in one bucket of water and sticking another plastic tube down the gullet of an empty water bottle. Then, a hand crank pumps the water from bucket to bottle. After the bottle is full, the process is completed by squeezing a few drops of iodine solution into the bottle and letting it sit for five minutes. The resulting water tastes like water in a hotel pool, but it doesn’t make you sick.

Sounds from adjoining buildings let us know that we are not the only people engaged in this type of domestic frenzy. The audible slap of wet laundry being struck against stone begins to resonate emphatically from our backyard as soon as the sun rises—a woman in the complex behind us washing her family’s clothes. The clink of dishware and the wails of waking children in other buildings nearby can be heard for several blocks. The smell of onions and garlic wafts through the neighborhood as the day commences. Lines of sopping wet clothes strung from trees and windows and the eaves of buildings are filled and dripping by the time we leave for work. Freshly scrubbed children play shoeless in the street while their older brothers and sisters leave their homes dressed smartly in pressed uniforms.

Our own domestic duties have made us strangely feel more a part of Tirur. The laundry, the cooking, the making of water, the sweeping, the cleaning—we realize we are in league with the other families around us—doing all the little things that keeps one sane in such a tough environment.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

Imagine my surprise this morning upon opening my email and finding several messages from family and friends with titles such as "MIZZZZOOOOUUUU!" and "How 'bout them Tigers?" It made me so happy to see MU's football team had knocked off the #1 Sooners. And it made me about as homesick as I have been since starting this journey. With that said, the post I had written before I found out the news of Mizzou's win fits right into that theme:


***
Five days in Tirur and the place is—unbelievably—beginning to feel like home. Our new job has had a lot to do with that. Teaching at JM Higher Secondary gives us a daily mission, a sense of purpose, a reason for being here. Inevitably, working eight hours a day has taken our minds off the insects, the mold, the dirt, the grime, and the smell in our apartment. Three solid nights of cleaning has also helped give us an illusion of domesticity.

We have taught four days and seen a steady parade of students. Jenna has a total of 13 classes, which she will teach twice per week. I have a total of 18 different classes, most of which I will see only once every week. Therefore, getting to know individual kids on campus has been a challenge. I recognize a few faces now but still could tell you no names beyond the mischievous sampling a talked about in the last post.

Still, Jenna and I cannot argue with the rock star treatment we get each day. From the moment we enter the front gates in the morning, students mob us as if we were Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They extend their small hands and shout, “Good morning, sir! Good morning ma’am! How are you?” Those that have not met us yet ask us our names. They sometimes follow up with: “What is your native place, sir?” It takes a concerted effort to finally get to the teachers’ lounge on the second floor as a shuffling pack of students follows us each step, more students glomming on to the mass as we go. Even after we get inside the lounge and begin unpacking our notebooks and pens and lunches, a scattering of students will hover outside the door or beyond the grated windows to peek in and watch us—as if we were models in a museum diorama suddenly and magically come to life.

The classes themselves have gone remarkably smoothly. This week consisted of standard getting-to-know activities and a basic conversation lesson. The students—for the most part—are willing and eager participants, with a few boys becoming too rowdy for their own good. Yet, the behavior problems Jenna and I encountered so frequently in Houston—snappy attitudes, unwillingness to work, overt defiance—have been absent here. We are not totally surprised, owing to our one-week experience in Kolkata. Still, each lesson ends with a refreshing air of accomplishment. “Yes,” that air seems to be telling us, “this is what teaching should be like.”

Several times, in fact, Jenna and I have started conversations this past week with the phrase, “Can you imagine if the kids we had in America…” and fill in the rest with something we had observed that week at our new school in Tirur. For example, “Can you imagine if the kids we had in America had to go to a school that had no lights?” It’s true: not a single light bulb in the place, not to mention no overhead projectors, data projectors, TVs, or desktop computers in the classrooms. Yet, somehow, learning gets done.

Or, “Can you imagine if the kids we had in America were forced to have gym class on a muddy field while running around with no shoes?” We wondered that while watching a group of boys energetically play a game of soccer while slipping through ankle-deep pools of brackish water and kicking the ball past two cinder blocks that served as goal posts. Yet, no sullen student sat on the sideline, refusing to participate.

Or, “Can you imagine if the kids we had in America were asked to sit respectfully through a class in which the teacher had to write everything on a chalkboard?” Several times, in the midst of a lesson this week, I have turned around after writing a sentence on the board to find each of my 30 some odd students with their heads up and their eyes forward, waiting for me to finish. Yet, no spitballs were glued to the back of my head.

This is not to say that the kids we had in America were pampered or led luxurious lives of wealth and affluence. Quite the contrary: they came from some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Houston. Many of them did regularly live without electricity. Many of them came from broken homes. Many of them rightfully carried loads of emotional baggage that would break people like me, used to easier lives.

Yet, it is all about perspective. Poverty in India is on a different level than it is in America. Our students in Houston—with houses, cable TVs, iPods, cell phones, and Air Jordan sneakers—would be considered middle class here. Indian impoverishment entails begging for food from strangers, unrolling a dingy bedroll on a street corner, and walking all day without even the cheapest of sandals. Hence, the chance at an education and the allures of advancement it entails are a greater motivator in a country where knowing English or your math tables can be the difference between sleeping with a roof over your head and sleeping on the street.

It is a message driven home to us everyday we come back from work. Our apartment is—by both our estimations—the “worst place” either one of us has ever lived. Yet, it has a roof. It has running water. It has a gas stove. It has a bed. It has electricity. And we still have the disposable income to add our own domestic flourishes: a floor mat, some burning incense, a clothesline, a toilet bowl cleaner.

Home definitely seems to be where the heart is. It may have taken a few days, but it appears our hearts have followed us to Tirur.

Why We're Here

And suddenly, we see why we are here in India.

After three summer months planning for both our trip and our wedding, after an August filled with the frenzied details of packing, after a September spent in the heat and grime of Kolkata getting our proper certification, after a week in the Himalayas on our unofficial ‘honeymoon’, and after two more laborious weeks in Bangalore stuck in jobless limbo, Jenna and I finally went back to work Tuesday.

The JM Higher Secondary School in Tirur could not have welcomed us better. Split between two campuses, the school is a Muslim private school with more than 2,500 students. The higher grades and a few scattered younger classes learn at one building at the top of a winding asphalt road on a densely wooded hill. The middle grades and some more young kids learn at another campus at the bottom of the hill, in a small valley surrounded by palm trees.

Most days, Jenna and I both will teach students in the middle grades—called standards in India—at the bottom of the hill. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I will spend the mornings at the upper campus teaching older kids in 10th and 11th standards. On these two days, I will go back to the lower campus in the afternoons to teach 8th and 9th standards. Jenna stays at the lower campus all day every day teaching 5th-7th standards. (We have figured out that Indian ‘standards’ are a number higher than a typical American ‘grade’. So, an 8th standard student in India would be a 7th grader in the US.)

We learned our schedule and all these details of the Indian education system from various helpful staff members who engaged us in conversation throughout the day. This school has welcomed ATI graduates in the past, so the other faculty members are fairly used to the sight of Westerners confusedly stumbling their way around the hallways.

“What is your name?” is how the staff member typically started the conversation.

We would tell them our names. They would scrunch their nose and ask us to spell it. Then they would tell us their own names and spell them. “Have a good day. Good luck!” is how they would usually end the conversation.

A chemistry teacher named Shabab introduced himself to me at the upper campus Tuesday. I had yet to teach a class and was sitting expectantly in the teachers’ lounge on the second floor—a room crammed with old dusty textbooks and school supplies.

“Do you know Shaun?” he asked me. I had gathered the previous day from our ATI guide Serush that Shaun was the teacher who had just left Tirur (and had incidentally lived in our current apartment and contributed to its destitute state).

I told Shabab that I had never met Shaun. “Ahh, well he learned a little Malayalam,” Shabab said, speaking of the local language. He nodded reflectively. “I think the students actually taught Shaun more Malayalam than he taught them English,” he said chuckling.


As for the classes, we learned that they are divided evenly between girls and boys. The school (and Tirur in general) is ruled by a strict set of conservative Muslim values. Therefore, all the girls wear black headscarves with their light blue, pinstriped uniforms. And the genders sit on opposite sides of the room from one another. The day begins with a sung Muslim prayer broadcast over loudspeakers to both campuses. At the sound, students and teachers rise and stand at casual attention. Students also break in the middle of the day for prayers at a small mosque between the campuses and then have lunch. The day begins at 9:45 and ends at 4:30.

The first day of teaching spun by in a whirlwind Tuesday. I saw six classes and Jenna saw five. Each class had at least 25 students. And the periods only lasted 40 minutes. Faces blurred together and names were impossible to memorize. Of course, the two students I was able to match with names today were mischief-makers—Ashique, a talkative boy in my 6th period, and Shahanna, a girl with adept English skills and a quick wit in my 7th period.

Regardless of the culture or the religion or the language, though, students have certain common characteristics around the world. They will laugh uncontrollably when you mispronounce their name. They will ask titillating questions just to get a rise out of you. (Like the girl who asked Tuesday if she could write down the name of her “lover” during a get-to-know-you activity.) They will groan when you ask them to complete their work. They will try to hide the fact that they have not done any work by casually putting their hand over their paper while thoughtfully staring at the ceiling. They will immediately start to talk to their friends when you turn your back. They will shout out the answer and keep shouting it, even if you ignore them for the half-dozen times they scream it. Boys will pinch each other and go crazy if you mention sports. Girls will roll their eyes at anything boys do. And they all smile and blush if you tell them, “Good job!”

I said “Good job” a lot Tuesday, and I got a lot of smiles. And in those moments, I knew that all the waiting, the planning, the training, the traveling, the packing, and the repacking…all of it…was worth it.

Careful What You Wish For

Let’s put our guesthouse in Tirur squarely under the heading of “Be Careful What You Wish For.” After not working at all in Bangalore for two weeks, we lobbied ATI to send us elsewhere. They promptly obliged, letting us know of an opportunity in Tirur in the southern state of Kerala. Having received our wishes on a golden platter, Jenna and I took an overnight train to Tirur and arrived early Monday morning. Tirur is a moderate sized town in the middle of the Kerala jungle--not too small but appreciably smaller than any Indian city we have been in yet. It is not comparable to Steelville, MO, but may be considered close in size to St. Joseph or St. Cloud. In Tirur, we were promised a four-month job teaching English at a private Muslim high school. We were also promised a modest stipend and free room and board.

Jenna and I quickly found out what you get for free.

Our apartment sits on the second floor of a rundown building on an unpaved side street, amidst a crowd of chockablock structures and crumbling shanties. You can’t miss it for its lime green paint job. Since we took the overnight train from Bangalore, we arrived at the place a little after seven in the morning. A rooster crowed. Dogs barked. And a baby nearby began to wail.

You enter our new home through a padlocked steel gate that guards a small porch. Through another door you enter the living area—which is furnished with a few plastic patio chairs and a plastic table. Two naked light bulbs cast an overly bright glare off the scarred, chipped walls. Our bedroom is just that: a bed and a room. A set of three grimy shelves sit recessed in the stucco wall. There is a spare room, filled with dusty English grammar books and old newspaper and another bed. I guess this would be our guestroom. Our kitchen is furnished with a few dusty dishes, some pots and pans, and one gas stovetop. No oven. No refrigerator. The bathroom has both Western and Indian style toilets—in case Jenna or I feel the need to experiment—and a rusty showerhead that spurts out only cold water. A forlorn sink sits outside the bath in the living area. Two worn mats lie atop the salmon-colored tile to give the space a little life.

Our guide for the day Suresh—a staff member at ATI in Kerala—gives us the tour of the place and promises the school we will be teaching at is “walkable” from our apartment. We ask about an Internet café and he assures us one is “just next door.”

“You feel uncomfortable?” he says, wagging his head back and forth in the Indian way.

Neither Jenna nor I want to appear the pampered Americans that we clearly are, so we both shake our heads vigorously: “No, no, no! It’s fine. We’re just tired from the train.”

Suresh looks unconvinced. “Tea?” he asks, trying to make us feel at home.

“Sure,” I reply.

As Suresh goes to the kitchen to make the tea, Jenna and I gingerly lay down on our new bed. Its wooden frame creaks and pops ominously. I stretch out and find that my feet hang off the end.

It is hard not to feel depressed at this moment. The furnishing is Spartan, the look of the place dingy and neglected. I am reminded of a budget hostel we stayed at in Siliguri on the last day of our week-long “honeymoon” to the Himalayas. We only needed a cheap place to stay before we caught our plane back to Kolkata the next day. Yet, we spent our entire night watching TV and not moving from our beds. This place in Tirur does not have a TV, I think, casting the memory of Siliguri shamefully from my mind.

The realization comes to me that so far in India, we have been lucky in our accommodations. Wireless Internet both in Kolkata and Bangalore. Hot water. Refrigerators. Fully-stocked kitchens. I feel guilty for my moroseness.

After tea, Suresh says we will soon visit the school. He will leave temporarily to give us a chance to freshen up. After Suresh has gone, all Jenna and I can do for a while is sit on our rickety bed in silence. We want to unpack but we have nowhere to put our things and the limited shelves we do have our blackened with grime. So, we sit and do nothing.

As I try to motivate myself to do something in our new home, I glance out the window and see a teenage girl walking out of a nearby building. The structure she comes from is dilapidated—with mold stains, peeling paint and decaying roof tiles. She has a backpack and a crisp gray school uniform that matches her gray headscarf. She must be Muslim. Suresh said the school we will teach at is “walkable”. Maybe this girl who just walked out of the old building next to us will be a student of ours.

In our bleak surroundings, I am given a moment of insight: our students will come from places like this, houses and flats in worse shape than this. Maybe they have no running water. No fans. No furniture. Suddenly, I realize: for four months, at least we can survive.

Bangalore...Over and Out

Last night, unexpectedly, we got news that ATI had found us a job at a secondary school in Kerala. They asked how soon could we get there? Without even looking at where ‘there’ was, we said, “Yes, we’ll be on a train this weekend.”

‘There’ turns out to be a small (by Indian standards) coastal city called Tirur, in the heart of the Keralan backwaters, about 30 miles north of Cochin. The job—so far as we can tell—is teaching English to older teenagers in a private school. ATI has assured us this school has employed ATI graduates in the past and has a long-running relationship with them. After our Bangalore experience, Jenna and I are taking all second-hand news like this with a whole shaker of salt. Yet, we are eagerly making our way to the train station today to book tickets and get out of here as soon as humanly possible. ATI told us we could be teaching by Monday.

Bangalore may turn out to be nothing more than a hiccup, a shallow furrow in a deep trench of wonderful memories, a monotonous interlude of inaction and boredom. A laughable experience we can tell our children about as we send them off to college someday, warning them against the vagaries of an unsympathetic world.

After our stunning arrival nearly two weeks ago—dinner at the Hard Rock, tour of the UB City office space—we were at a new high. We had come to conquer India, and that is what it felt like we were doing. But India fought back hard against this notion, a cornered boxer with a reputation for pulling punches until the late rounds. Our seven days of inactivity and the stress of telling our manager we were essentially quitting before we had started nearly broke us. We felt at times that India was definitely winning, battering our patience and kind-heartedness into pulp. We went through spiraling rounds of emotion—guilt, sadness, anger, frustration, apathy—and finally reached a measure of calm last night. The final bell had rung, ending the internal fight.

Bangalore was not the best place to be holed up with nothing to do. In many respects, it is a lot like Houston—without the bars and friends. It is sprawling, spreading out to the horizon with no landmark a convenient distance away from your present location. Everyone here drives. Public transportation is unreliable and overpriced. Tourist sights are at a minimum. It is hard to pass the time when all you can think about is the work you should be doing.

On the other hand, the climate is perfect—breezy and mild, sunny with daily batches of short, calming rain. The people are generally more acclimatized to Westerners due to the city’s status as an international business center; therefore, you get stared at and harassed less. And the amenities are what any American would want—cable, Wi-fi, AC, warm water, flushing toilets.

I am sure we might sacrifice some of these things once we get to Tirur. But I am sure we will gain more, too. Just as we gained some by our dull fortnight in Bangalore—when it seemed, only briefly, that India had beaten us.

The Other Shoe...

In the end, the situation here in Bangalore dissolved rapidly.

After last week's whirlwind--where we were taken out to dinner and given a tour of our high-tech office space--things fizzled. The day after we first went into the office, we got a cryptic email from our manager Awsan saying he would not be able to make it into the office on Thursday or Friday. He proposed starting fresh on Monday in the office. We agreed and set to planning with the few textbooks Awsan had given us.

We emailed a few times and called Awsan on both Friday and Saturday asking about the possibility of getting more books and double-checking about work on Monday. He told us he continued to be busy and would have to get back to us.

Monday came and we did not go into the office. Awsan said things were not quite ready. He asked if we could wait until Tuesday. A little cowed, we agreed. Tuesday came and it was the same thing, yet this time our visit was pushed back to Thursday. After that call on Tuesday, Jenna and I emailed our handlers at ATI in Kolkata (the people we had trained with and the ones who had set up this internship). They contacted Awsan and then also asked us about our experience so far. After hearing about the past week, they suggested we get a new internship...somewhere possibly in Kerala, a state directly southwest of Bangalore.

We agreed. We emailed Awsan telling him we could go no further. We met him Wednesday morning. He seemed resigned and downcast but also accepted our decision honorably. We had yet to see more textbooks or any students. He promised us things would be ready to go by November 1. Could we just wait two-and-a-half more weeks?

We told him no, we couldn't.

We are still in Bangalore and still living at the wonderful guesthouse Awsan originally set up for us. To his credit, Awsan volunteered to pay out the first month's rent here, though we feel obliged to pay it ourselves once we leave. We have made contact with ATI in Kerala and are waiting to hear back. We remain in limbo, maybe a little wiser and little more cynical than before. But our spirits are not dampened and we still find the next few months to be filled with promise.

A Spot of Tea

This weekend has been rather slow and afforded us some time for reflection and leisure (as if we can say that with straight faces considering we haven't had jobs since May).

Yet, we are to officially begin our new jobs teaching English in Bangalore tomorrow, so this feels like the end of something. To be precise, though, we won't actually begin teaching until NEXT Monday. This week will be used to plan and prepare.

As we had so much free time over the past few days, I began experiments on how to make the best batch of Indian milk tea. I wanted to come away from our year in India being able to make this brew because leaving India without the ability to make tea struck me as akin to leaving Juilliard without the ability to play an instrument. Tea is as intrinsic to the "experience" of India as the smell of incense or the sight of saffron-colored marigolds. It powers industry, it breeds cooperation, it energizes the masses, and above all, it tastes good.

Tea, of course, is everywhere here. It is reflexively served at social gatherings or business meetings that involve two or more people. It is not uncommon for diners to order tea before and after a meal. Tea is so popular and partaken of so frequently that a cottage industry of tea touts are gainfully employed across the country: individuals who simply carry around portable steel pots with detachable broilers and serve tea on the street. Walking around India you find the crushed remains of clay cups in which tea is served at ever-present chai stands. These shot-glass sized vessels are swiftly made in outdoor kilns, then filled with tea for patrons who down the drink in one gulp then chuck the empty cups into the gutter.

Coffee runs a distant second on this nation's liquid palate (unfortunately, for me). And espressos and cappuccinos are so rare as to not be worth mentioning. I believe I have had at least one cup of tea every day since arriving in India. Jenna--who lacks the certain gene that predisposes humans to crave caffeine--has had less than me, for sure, but still her fair share. Starbucks could never do profitable business in India but a Starbucks-like chain called Cafe Coffee Day is doing pretty well. Yet, despite its name, the first item on Cafe Coffee Day's menu: tea.

Only after several hundred personal taste tests was I ready to begin making tea. I also had a week-long trip to the heart of India's tea country in northern West Bengal province under my belt. And, in Kolkata, we had been lucky enough to live three weeks with a girl named Shardah who was from Darjeeling--the city synonymous with tea throughout the world. Before I give you my recipe, a few principles I have picked up:

1) Tea powder is better than tea leaves. Apparently, tea powder is more aromatic and gives off less residue in the boiling water than tea leaves. We had one pot of tea made from tea leaves at a restaurant in Siliguri, and we can attest that it was inferior.

2) Soy milk gives the tea a "thicker" composition than cow's or goat's milk. But of course, the higher the fat content of the milk, the "thicker" it will be once done. You can always dilute the milk with water.

3) Letting the milk boil for too long or not stirring enough while boiling can lead to curdling, which makes for some nasty, nasty tea.

4) Chai stands on the street are safe to visit (since the water used to make the tea is boiled), but their concoction is electrifyingly potent. Only if you are an experienced caffeine-hound, should you attempt to drink that stuff.

5) Only Westerners and amateurs dip tea bags into boiling water to make their tea. I did this for the first month that we lived in India. Indians take to this tactic as much as Kansas Citians take to microwaving barbecue ribs. Does it work? Yes. But does it feel right? Absolutely not.

With all that aside, my first batch of milk tea made this weekend in our guesthouse's common kitchen turned out drinkable. I am using soy milk because cow dairy products are hard to come by in India. The soy milk turned my tea into a sort of thin batter. I needed to use more water next time. I also thought I could use more cardamom and less sugar. With these mental notes in mind, I made a second batch which turned out better. Jenna was able to enjoy a cup as she studied for the LSAT.

Here is the recipe, which should make a regular pot of tea to serve 2-4 people. Try it and if you find variations or perfect the tactics of making it in a different way than I instruct below, tell me so I can experiment:

-Mix 4 cups skim or 1% milk and 2 cups water into medium saucepan and bring to boil.

-Add 2 tablespoons tea powder and stir into milk and tea. Continue boiling for 2 minutes.

-Add two pinches of cardamom or ginger (your preference). Continue stirring.

-Add two tablespoons sugar and boil entire mixture for an additional 2 minutes.

-Strain tea liquid into pot. Crucial that you have a coriander or tea strainer fine enough that it catches the minute granules of tea powder.

After that, hopefully, you will enjoy and not gag. This is only a little taste of India, though. Really, to truly get the tea "experience", you have to come here.

Rarified Air

Picture: A street-level view of UB City, the office tower in which Jenna and I will be teaching English for the next six months.

At lunchtime on our third day in Bangalore, Jenna and I found ourselves on an open terrace overlooking the city’s lush Cubbon Park. The pinkish dome of the Karnataka state legislature could be seen rising magisterially above the trees. A light breeze fanned our faces as we dug into our meals: a tangy tabbouli salad with white grapes, onions and dill for me; a grilled Panini with fresh mozzarella, pesto, cucumber and tomatoes for Jenna.

It was a setting seemingly more appropriate for New York, Paris or London. Such is the ambition of India’s so-called Silicon Valley”: to mimic the sublime comfort of the world’s other great cities to the point that you forget you are in India.

We were eating lunch at UB City, a seventeen-story office building in the heart of Bangalore’s business district. It towers over Cubbon Park—the so-called “lungs” of Bangalore—and its offices give good views of the sprawling metropolis as it reaches out towards the Western Ghats, a mountain range which can be seen distantly on the horizon.

It is not the reality of wealth that makes UB City thrive, it is the aspiration for it. Ersatz murals of Venice line the complex’s main lobby, coupled with huge circular portraits of long-forgotten Medieval European aristocrats. The monolithic prints have a purposefully degraded quality, as to give the bustling office workers a sense of urbane history as they walk distractedly to the elevators, Blackberries and iPhones to their ears.

The lower two levels of UB City are taken up by a sparsely populated but eminently luxurious mall, filled with only the highest of high-end brands: Louis Vuitton, Canali, Ferragamo, Etro, Jimmy Choo, Armani, Omega, Tag Heuer. The employees at these stores are notably restrained, choosing to stand languorously at the stores’ glass entrances, disdaining for a few seconds to glance at passerby before yawning or checking a text message.

The third level is a breezy mezzanine, with open patios and wide boulevards leading to the car garage. It was here where Jenna and I were having lunch at a moderately priced French bakery. Next door, a Subway advertised hot Italian combos—with mutton pepperoni. A five-star hotel stood guard over the food court, its rooms looking out onto the patio with good views of Cubbon Park and beyond. Rooms there began at Rs. 6,000 a night. (About $135, which is a lot in Indian terms.)

Awsan sat across from us chomping on a French Dip sandwich. “You like the place?” he asked, the side of his mouth stuffed with roast beef.

Jenna and I nodded in shocked agreement. For it was here, at this monolithic tower, this homage to Westernized wealth and ambition, that we would be teaching English.

Our classroom was one rented space on the 15^th floor, in a corner of a brightly lit floor that housed at least another dozen clients in a rat maze of cubicles and softly carpeted hallways. Just off the elevators, a spacious, neo-modern lounge greeted workers as they strode into their offices everyday. Our first visit afforded us the chance to gawk at the two HD flat-screen TVs against a colored wall at the back of the lounge. Indian periodicals and copies of daily newspapers filled a three-tiered tray near a glass wall off to the side. Soft leather swivel chairs filled the lounge and gave the space a coffee shop vibe—a supremely upper class coffee shop vibe.

“Use the chairs. Watch TV. Use the Internet—it’s free Wi-Fi. Read the papers. This is where you can take breaks between classes. The students will be able to use this area, too,” Awsan explained. “Do you want chai? Coffee? Cappuccino? Soda?” he asked.

“Coffee’s fine,” we mumbled, staring the silent images of CNN India on the TV screens.

Awsan gave our order to a man in a blue smock, who then quickly turned on his heels and dashed around the corner.

We sat at one of the tables in the lounge and Awsan laid out the plan for us. He had been personally registering students for a few weeks. We had enough to start two classes—a Basic English class in the mornings and an Advanced class in the afternoons. Jenna and I would be teaching the same students together in the same room. After agreeing to this, Awsan got up and went around the corner. We sipped our coffee, which had come in pristine white cups and saucers.

Awsan came back toting a cardboard box. “Here are the teacher manuals for the textbooks you will be using. You can plan pretty much how you like. I’m no teacher. I will just run the business side of things. I trust you guys,” he said.

As we talked, Jenna and I came to realize that Exceed English Center—the school we were working at—was the venture of one sole man: Awsan. He explained how he had seen a need in Bangalore for students of the many different nationalities who come here to study (primarily for fields in the technology industry). He had cobbled together some funding, put together a brochure and had begun recruiting students through his connections in the Middle East.

Frankly, it was—is—an audacious plan. The nervous energy we had seen Awsan display over the past few days was just that: nerves. Much of his personal fortune is tied up in Exceed. The constant ringing of his cell phone that day revealed the depth of the frenzy surrounding the school’s scheduled opening of October 18. Potential students calling to ask about the courses. Registered students calling to ask more questions about the course. Customers calling to enquire about Aswan’s other business—a car and scooter rental.

On the 15^th floor of UB City, Jenna and I were coming to realize the truly rarified nature of our enterprise. Exceed English Center is us and Awsan at the moment. "People asked me, why take the chances?" Awsan told us. "You do not have teachers. You do not have students. Why risk it? Well, God has a plan. Inshallah (God willing), things will work out. I mean, look: I found you guys! Somebody is looking out for us!"

Jenna and I nodded silently. The views out UB City's windows were looking at bit higher than before.

Getting to Bangalore: Part I

**There are two posts today to describe our impressions after two days in Bangalore: our new home. Please check out Parts I and II.**

In just over two hours in the air, Jenna and I traveled from Kolkata—a city resolutely stuck in the late 1970s—to Bangalore, a city aggressively trying to become one of the most modern in the world.

The Bangalore International Airport looks like a set out of Star Trek, especially when all you are used to seeing are moss-covered buildings and Ambassador cars that came off the assembly line in 1968. This is not to say anything improper about Kolkata. Indeed, it had been our first home in India—inarguably the most intriguing experience of our lives thus far. The grittiness and stubborn lack of modernity, in fact, is what makes Kolkata great in a way. Yet, it was nice to walk out of the terminal in Bangalore and not smell putrid garbage or have your eyes singed by diesel exhaust.

One thing that was not different from Kolkata, though, were the aggressive taxi touts. “Taxi, sir? Taxi? You need a ride?” Every five feet we stepped, we had another taxi driver plying his skills. Of course, we made easy targets: big white guy and his wife carrying six bags, looking around helplessly for direction.

Awsan, our contact at the Exceed English Center, had told us earlier that day before we had left Kolkata, that he would meet us at the airport. “Will you have a sign?” I asked. “No, I have your pictures. I know what you look like,” he had responded. Even though I realized I would stick out in India, to my American sensibilities, the plan seemed less than foolproof.

We eventually dropped our bags in a tired heap by a large concrete pillar outside the terminal and looked around. Nobody save the taxi drivers, had approached us. And we had not seen our names on the sign. The only thing that reassured us was the modern setting. The bright lights and snazzy food kiosks made us feel as if we were back in America (or at least Europe).

After about ten minutes, another man approached us cautiously dressed in jeans and a corduroy jacket. “Kee-ley?” he asked hesitantly. The man had just called me the name of Jenna’s mother’s pet dog.

“Yeah, KY-le. Are you Awsan?” I responded, sure I was butchering his name, too. The man broke out in a wide grin. “Sorry. KY-le. Yes, I am Awsan,” he said (his name sounded like Ow-shaun). “Let us go to the car, huh?” Awsan said, picking up one of our bags. We walked a short ways and stopped on the curb next to a small, boxy white care. Awsan threw the bags in the rear and we all got in. We began driving towards our new home, a guesthouse that Awsan had also arranged for us.

As we drove, I was reminded of a similar nighttime journey away from an airport. Just a little over a month ago, Jenna and I had arrived dazed and tired in Kolkata. That drive—from Kolkata’s airport to our guesthouse—had been a revealing, somewhat scary look at the city’s impoverishment and chaos. This drive was anything but that. In fact, as we sped along a four-lane highway with clearly marked lanes (that the driver’s stayed in) I felt almost like I was back in Houston.

The highway took us past large, modern-looking office buildings and businesses with bright interior lights and neon signs. Swirling, ribbon-like overpasses swept over the road and took other drivers off into different directions. A skyline could be seen vaguely in the dark distance. The roadsides were free of makeshift stalls and ramshackle homes. Indeed, we saw only a handful of pedestrians in our entire drive. Bangalore seemed quiet, almost deserted at 11 o’clock at night. Unlike Kolkata, which had been teeming with life at around the same time—walkers and auto-rickshaws spilling into the street, bicyclists careening through traffic, sidewalks completely overrun by squatters.

“You will find Bangalore a very nice place,” Awsan was explaining. He knew we had been living in Kolkata for almost a month. Originally from Yemen, Awsan had moved to Bangalore almost a decade ago and had gotten a marketing degree from a local university.

“You know, Ky-lee,” he said, still getting a handle on my name, “you are a lot bigger in person. Your picture that you sent makes you look small,” he laughed. “In fact, you are huge!” Jenna cackled from the back seat and the ice had been broken.

After a half-hour drive, Awsan pulled down some side streets and stopped on a narrow lane in front of a guesthouse stuck snugly between two taller buildings. “This is the place. The guy here is very nice. You will love it.” Indeed, Awsan had done his homework well. The guesthouse—called the Richmond Suites, for we were in an area of the city known as Richmond Town—had all the amenities an American couple could ask for: furniture, purified tap water, hot bath water, wi-fi Internet, cable, a rooftop terrace and a fully-stocked kitchen.

“The price I told you through email still stands,” Awsan told us quietly as we unpacked our bags. An eerie calm resided over the street as we took our bags from the back of the car. Jenna and I had not heard total residential silence since we had left America. “In fact, KY-lee, the first month is on us. We want you to be comfortable.”

Shocked, I looked at Awsan. “The first month?” He smiled and shook his head back and forth in the Indian way. “Of course. You work for me. I want you to be comfortable. Relaxed.” Remembering the old American proverb about things that appeared too good to be true, I walked into our new room in a daze. A different kind of daze from the one I had been in on our first night in Kolkata.

Awsan left with a polite nod, “We will be in touch tomorrow. Tonight, rest. Relax. You must be tired.” This was Indian hospitality taken to a whole new level. Awsan closed the door and Jenna and I were immediately wrapped in a warm blanket of solitude we had not known for a month.

We hugged each other and Jenna said, “Welcome home.”

Getting to Bangalore: Part II

Picture: A view from the rooftop terrace at our new guesthouse in Bangalore.

Our new boss Awsan told us he wanted to take us out for a nice dinner to celebrate our arrival in Bangalore. He picked us up at eight from our guesthouse. Another young man was with him, who introduced himself as Faisal, Awsan’s long-time roommate who was originally from Saudi Arabia and had just finished his studies in Chemical Engineering.

“Where would you like to go?” Awsan asked as he put his car into gear. “Oh, anywhere is good. Something local. We don’t mind,” I replied.

“The Hard Rock Café,” Awsan said definitively. Jenna and I smiled at each other. I thought about protesting, but Awsan seemed set on taking his two new American friends to a quintessential American place. “Sure,” I replied.

Five minutes later, we reached our destination. The Hard Rock sat on a side street in a bustling part of the city near the downtown high-rises and corporate offices. It looked and sounded like any other Hard Rock I had been in—from St. Louis to Orlando. Loud 70s rock, guitars encased in glass displays hanging from the walls, record covers and concert posters plastered everywhere you looked, and the smell of sizzling beef. A smell I had forgotten since arriving in India more than a month ago. I hated to admit it—amidst the hyper-Americanized memorabilia and blaring music—but I felt a little closer to home.

Awsan wasted no time ordering drinks. “You like beer?” he asked. We nodded. “You must understand,” he continued after the waiter left with our orders, “Ramadan just ended. I fasted for nearly two months. No beer, no alcohol, no nothing. I like to be able to have a drink every once and a while.”

The drinks came and after that Faisal told the waiter we wanted the Jumbo Combo—a gluttonous appetizer with all the hallmarks of American fast food stacked on to one plate: onion rings, French fries, egg rolls, barbecue chicken wings, fried chicken tenders and potato skins. The thought struck me that having accustomed ourselves to an Indian diet, we might induce cardiac arrest with this one meal.

The Jumbo Combo came with a thud as the waiter laid it down. Awsan ordered another round of drinks and we began to talk about the school.

“You cannot believe how hard it is to get real native English speakers to teach these courses. It is a miracle you are here. I am….” He paused, looking for the right words. “I am so happy you are here. Cheers!” He lifted his beer and Jenna, Faisal and I all did the same. “Welcome to Bangalore!”

“It’s great to be here!” Jenna said.

“The students will want to meet you before classes begin,” Awsan continued looking more serious. “When I tell them that they will have real Americans as their teachers, they will not believe me. They will think I am scamming them, so we will set up a day before classes start so you can meet the students.” From there, this young Yemeni who looked to be no older than 25, explained in detail the structure of the classes and his efforts to obtain the required textbooks and register a proper number of students.

“It has taken some time, some efforts. But I think we can say that there will be no more than 12 students in each of your classes. One group of students will be taking a six-month course. More intensive. More expensive. The other group will be only four months.”

With the Jumbo Combo remarkably finished, Faisal looked into our eyes. “Main course?” he asked expectantly. Jenna and I started to shake our heads ‘no’. We were already stuffed. Awsan jumped in: “Oh please, please, please. Kyle. Jenna. You are American. This is a feast. It is my treat! Have a main course!” We suddenly felt like we had a reputation of a nation to defend, so we naturally ordered hamburgers. And Awsan ordered another round of beers, though Faisal reminded him he had to drive us back to our guesthouse. As we dug into our burgers, the conversation switched to more personal topics. Awsan talked about his family in Yemen, all of whom lived in the capital city Sa’naa. “I have four brothers and three sisters. I am the only one not living in Yemen.”

Faisal echoed his roommate’s sentiment. “I have five—FIVE—sisters!” he put up his open hand with the five fingers splayed out dramatically. “And two brothers. My dad calls me probably three, four times a week. Just to say ‘hi’. I think he misses me. I was just there for two months. I feel like when I am there, I am in the ‘80s. Everything is so old,” he laughed. I asked the two native Middle Easterners what their families thought of them living so far away in India.

“They are okay with it,” Awsan said. “They understand I am trying to make it on my own. Of course, I am getting married this December,” he said so casually that I almost missed it.

“Oh! Congratulations! Who is she?” I asked.

“I have never met her. Our parents arranged it. But we talk on the phone a lot. She is very kind. I am excited. I go back to Yemen for the marriage and then she will come back here with me,” Awsan said with a broad grin.

“I like to make people feel happy,” he continued with a philosophical glint in his eye. “I feel there is too much negativity in the world. You watch the news, you know? It’s all negative. TV shows: negative. Music: negative. I want to do something positive with my life. That is part of the reason I started this English program: to help people learn English and get ahead.”

The dinner had taken an unexpectedly reflective turn, but Awsan guided it through with a deftness that belied his inner confidence. We felt at ease with him. We did not mind opening up to him and talking about important issues and current events. We argued playfully and challenged each other on our opinions.

By ten o’clock, the dinner was coming to a close. But it felt as if there—at the Hard Rock Bangalore—with two Americans and two Arabs sitting over the refuse of half-eaten hamburgers and old potato skins, the world’s problems could come to a proper resolution.

We got up to leave. Awsan put his arm around my shoulder as we walked out. “I am glad you are here. You two are like family now. We’re family. In this together.”

Honeymoon: Part V

**In order to catch up on some lost days, we have put up three different posts today. Make sure you get a chance to look at all of them.**

Gangtok is spread out over a series of steep hills. Therefore, the best way to get around is to hire a car for the day. Dozens of small companies ply tours to Gangtok's half-dozen or so famous sights. Jenna and I picked up a tour that took us to seven points, including two monasteries outside of town.

However, our first stop proved to be the most memorable: the Flower Exhibition Center. This place is by no means Gangtok's most coveted attraction. The guide books say it is relatively striking during March when the orchids are blooming. It is simply a large greenhouse with a variety of colorful roses and bright red anthruriums growing in scattered abundance. What made this place memorable was the group of high-school boys seen in this post's picture. The boys said they were from the southern state of Tamil Nadu and were visiting Sikkim on a class trip. When they saw me, they stopped their half-hearted tour of flowers and rushed over to me with their cameras in tow.

"Sir, where are you from?" the apparent leader of this pack asked me. I told him I was from America. He whooped loudly and pointed triumphantly at a few of the other boys. Clearly, he had won a bet. "Can you take a picture with us?" he asked, as five or six of the other boys got out cameras all at once. We proceeded, then, to line up for a few dozen photos as if we were on the bustling red carpet and not in a quiet green house. At the end, they shook my hand along with bowing politely to Jenna and exited the garden, no doubt excited to tell their friends they had seen a real-live American.

From there, our drive took us to a series of interesting places: the Sikkim Directorate for Handicrafts and Handlooms, a government cooperative that lets poor artisans design crafts like rugs, toys, and purses to be sold in local markets; the Gangtok Ropeway, a cable car that rides high above Gangtok's streets, giving its riders great views of the surrounding countryside (we rode to the top and back, all the while as I was holding the support bar with white knuckles); the Duddul Choedten, a Buddhist shrine dedicated to a famed monk who, as legend has it, banished evil spirits from the area; and the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, a fascinating one-room exhibit hall with an impressive collection of Buddhist artifacts, including the crown of a human skull that had once been used as a ceremonial dish.

Our last two stops were Buddhist monasteries outside Gangtok. We drove along spiraling mountain roads past terraced rice paddies to get there. The first we visited was in a small village called Rumtek. The monastery at Rumtek is famous to Buddhists for being the seat of the Karma Kagya Sect of Buddhism, a controversial off-shoot of mainstream Buddhism not recognized by the Chinese government. As a result, armed guards check your passports before allowing you to enter the monastery complex.

After a not-too-insubstantial walk up a winding hill, we reached the monastery itself where we, again, had to go through guards and a metal detector. We finally stepped onto the monastery's quiet main courtyard. All we could see was blue skies above us. Monks' living quarters surrounded the main prayer hall. Colored flags and pennants fluttered in the breeze. Inside the prayer hall, brightly intricate tapestries and murals portrayed the Karma Kagya sect's former leaders (known as "karmapas"). A giant picture of the current karmapa--who looked to be no older than a college student--sat on the prayer hall's main throne. The karmapa is not allowed to enter Rumtek, due to India's fear of angering China. He currently lives in Dharamsala with the Dalai Lama.

After this, we took another twisting road to Lingdum Monastery. Though not as politically meaningful as Rumtek, we found Lingdum to be more impressive visually. On a secluded hillside, we could gaze out over a large valley from Lingdum's terraced courtyard. When we arrived, the monks were conducting afternoon prayers. About 50 young monks--some who looked to be as young as eight or nine--were sitting on the hard stone ground of the courtyard reciting prayers. They competed with each other vigorously to be the loudest, with one little monk in particular getting the best of his friends.

From the prayer hall on a level above where the young monks were praying, we could hear more sounds of prayer. The beating of drums was accompanied by the drone of conch shells and the high-pitched whine of the gyaling, an instrument that resembles a big metal clarinet. We stepped into the hall to see two lines of monks seated and playing the instruments, swaying side-to-side. The monks on the ends of the two lines pounded two large drums strung onto wooden frames. The monks not playing instruments chanted, their voices echoing in a vibrating hum throughout the chamber. The whole display appeared ancient, its sacredness visceral. It was easy to imagine other monks conducting a similar ceremony in a similar spot centuries earlier.

We left Lingdum, which concluded our whirlwind tour of Gangtok. Our honeymoon was nearly complete, save a trip back to Kolkata. Then, it would be on to Bangalore and some real work.

Honeymoon: Part IV

The road from Darjeeling to Gangtok via the Teesta Bazaar is a gut-swirling, bone-rattling affair. Jenna and I opted to pay a little extra for a private car, as opposed to going cheap and sharing a long-distance taxi with ten other people. From Darjeeling, our driver initially took us south through Ghoom and then made a sharp left towards the east. This put us upon a twisting, steeply descending road that made a series of hairpin turns through an alpine forest of spruce and cedar trees.

After two hours of jostling, our journey had taken us to the Teesta River. Just before we reached the river basin, our driver stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the Teesta Valley. There, we got an expansive view of the rolling hills and the river as it carved an elegant path through the countryside. (The picture in this post is one Jenna took at the viewpoint.)

We crossed the Teesta at a small ramshackle market town known as Teesta Bazaar. Then, we drove over a modern-looking bridge and set ourselves upon National Highway 31, a smoothly paved asphalt road that feels remarkably like a Western interstate. This part of the journey meandered laconically through an picturesque landscape of forests and hills. We ran parallel along the mightiest part of the Teesta River, where we could see rapids and small waterfalls from our vantage on the road fifty feet above the river.

At Rangpo, the border crossing into Sikkim, we crossed another bridge and were greeted my armed guards who directed us to a boxy looking station where we presented our passports and a special registration form. Sikkim was its own princely state until the early 1970s, when it was annexed by India. In many ways, Sikkim still sees itself as its own country. Therefore, visitors have to go through the bureaucratic pretension of presenting their documents, as if they are entering a foreign land.

After crossing the border, the road shifted upwards again and turned into a rutted mess. The final miles into Sikkim’s capital Gangtok are rough beyond compare. On this stretch of the road, landslides are common, and the rocks and boulders that shower down on the asphalt highway scar the road and leave potholes as big as bathtubs. In addition, the traffic picks up. Trucks and lorries laden with commercial goods, other jeeps and shared taxis filled with up to a dozen riders, motorcycles and scooters all head towards Sikkim’s only metropolis. Therefore, the mere 12 miles between Rangpo and Gangtok take 90 minutes on a good day. On a bad day—say when there is an actual landslide—we would not even be able to get through. This day turned out to be a good one.

Gangtok’s environs began at the bottom of a hill and the road leading to the city center ran at the same grade as the uphill tug of a roller coaster. Our car’s engine made a halting, crunching sound the entire way, and it felt as if our vehicle would die of exhaustion at any moment. We could see the twinkling of lights on the blackened profile of the hillside as we moved upwards. The streets became busier and more congested as we got higher. Most of Gangtok’s streets go up and down. Only a few select avenues—at the very top near the city’s ridgeline—actually run flat. San Francisco’s famed hilly terrain looks practically Kansan in comparison.

We arrived at the central taxi stand in the midst of this gabled city breathless. We had headaches from exhilaration. Or maybe it was just the effects of such dramatic changes in altitude combined with the five-hour pounding our bodies had taken. Either way, Gangtok presented itself as an odd mixture of Indian calamity and Swiss serenity. Its homes and apartment buildings, hanging precariously to the city’s cliffs, strike you as absolutely European. Sikkim likes to call itself the “Switzerland of the East”. After that drive, we could only hope some coffee and baguettes would be waiting for us at some nice quiet café nearby.

Honeymoon: Part III

Look at this picture closely. See that little bump over Jenna's shoulder? That would be Kachendzonga: the world's third tallest mountain. From this vantage, it looks like a harmless cloud, but in reality it is an awe-inspiring 28,169 feet.

This picture was taken at Tiger Hill, a famous viewpoint on the southern edge of Darjeeling. We woke up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a taxi along with Joe and Bea (our German friends we met on the train from Kurseong.) This pre-dawn trek to Tiger Hill is quite the draw. More than 300 people huddled around a concrete pavilion with us as we awaited the sun to rise. At first, all we could see were dark misty shapes in the ether. However, as the sun made its slow journey into the sky, we could see the mountains take shape. Luckily, the clouds that had plagued us thus far dissipated enough for us to get great views of Kanchendzonga and its surrounding peaks. Its east face bathed in a pinkish glow, the great mountain presented to us tourists an unforgettable sight.

In the local language, Kanchendzonga means “mountain of five peaks” and it has been worshipped by indigenous people in this region for millenia. Its ethereal power struck us immediately. We did not get an unobstructed view, yet it was sobering all the same. Jenna and I had just traveled to Pike's Peak during the summer while visiting Jenna's sister Mara in Colorado Springs. We traveled to the top aboard the Cog Railway and had marveled at the views and landscape below. Yet, Pike's Peak is barely half the height of Kanchendzonga at 14,115 feet tall. (Indeed, nothing in the West rivals the Himalayas. All 100 of the tallest mountains in the world are in Asia!)

We left Tiger Hill content. We would be leaving Darjeeling later that day for Sikkim, an Indian province still further north. Our contacts in Kolkata had told us before we left that the views of the mountains would be even better there than in Darjeeling. After our dawn excursion, we were finding that hard to believe.