And we're off...

The plane ride wasn't bad, it was 14 hours, but I mainly slept.  It was a polar flight, which was really cool, I got to see the ocean completely frozen over!  We arrived in New Dehli in the evening (I was so jet lagged, I have no idea what time it was) and the first thing I noticed was the heat.  The air was heavy and hard to breathe, and smelled stale.  We went from a plane to a bus, and the traffic was terrible.  I remained in relatively good spirits for the drive (although my snoring might have dampered the spirits of my classmates). 

View from the plane.  This was taken at 12AM local time!

I woke up the next morning, sleepy but pumped to really begin this trip.  We left our hotel in Havali Kunta, Panipat, and began the long drive across the Indo-gangetic plain.  It's a large, flat floodplain directly south of the Himalaya range.  It is made up of 10 kilometers of sediment, all the soil that runs off the mountain range.  I was amazed to see the vast flat area.  There were macaques running all over the place.  We spent a lot of time driving.

Menali 9/4/11

We arrived in Menali  around 1 AM, after finishing our 17 hour bus ride that day.  I never wanted to see another bus again.  Ever.  The view I woke up to was incredible.   Our first  geological stop was the Beas River bed.  The main thing that hit me about this place was the incredible size of things.  The scale of everything was huge!  Just huge!  Boulders the size of elephants were scattered haphazardly through the area.  It took some seriously fast, strong water to move those things around.  I was seeing some of the affects of the glaciers on the landscape. 

Menali was a cool town.  It was kind of hip and a little bit touristy, there was a main square for shopping and a lot of places to eat (I told you, I talk about food a lot).  I went out with a friend of mine, and sitting alone at the restaurant earned us a few strange looks.  I got a delicious vegetable and rice dish.  We found a slug the size of a cucumber.  There were other exotic animals walking the streets, mainly stray dogs and a few donkeys.  It was hard getting used to not drinking out of the faucet, and this was the first night I remembered not to run my toothbrush under the water.

Jispa 9/6/11

I saw as I traveled through India how different it was from one town to the next.  Jispa is a good example; it was a world away from Menali.  It was a simple, quiet town.  If you could even call it a town.  It was more like a cluster of buildings along one road.  My favorite part about Jispa was the prayer wall.  It was a long, stone fence along the road, but on each stone a mantra was carefully carved.  This town was also the first one we gave water filters to.

One of the people that came with us on our trip raised money to bring water filters and donate them at schools and monasteries that we pass through.  Another student brought water testing supplies and ran experiments on the presence  of fecal ecoliform in the water.  And yes, based on Julia's tests, the filters were MUCH needed. 

Several of our group went over to Jispa's monastery and school. It was opened by the Dahlai Lama in 1994.  The concept of personal property is somewhat different in India, and no one cared if we walked in and looked around.  It was not the building, but the children in it that captivated me.  They were absolutely darling (as children often are).  It felt really good to be a part of providing these kids clean drinking water.