Our drive to Bhubaneswar was an all-day affair, about 4-5 hours (though we still got to our hotel early). I actually slept for almost the entire time, despite the rising heat in the state. It has been a balmy 40C/104F for a long string of days now, and so we have been plastered into our clothing since the temperature became what it is now. Apparently when I was asleep I missed a pit stop at a tea stand for our drivers while my team watched a mongoose chase on the side of the road (I am not kidding). As much fun as that would have been, though, I much rather the sleep at the time.
We got back to the city, and the loud noises and concentrated rush was a hit in the face compared to our slumbering Berhampur.
Our Hotel Pushpak....what is there to say about this seedy little place...well, we have AC, which was good for some of the members. And there are western toilets, which can be a plus. There are limited assorted creatures, always an upgrade from rural India. Their restaurant is decent, though a bit pricey compared to some of our local eats. And we all share one room, separate beds for all. But....the breakfast that should be complimentary is a farce, and there is no internet. And the rooms/halls all smell a bit dank. They don't know anything about the area of Bhubaneswar in which we are situated... And there is no laundry, which was devastating for our team.
So the first thing our team went to do while our short stay in the city was to find a place to do our laundry. Maulin hauled around our compiled laundries in a big blue laundry bag that Hallie brought, making him look like a modern Indian Santa Claus who's colorblind. The hot weather made our moves slightly slower, but the real problem was the fact that we had no idea where we were going to find a laundry place. Dry cleaners were the only option, it seemed. At first, we walked through alley ways and marketplaces to find many, many saree shops and tailors with no clue about cleaning facilities. But then we finally started to find some cleaners! One issue was prominent: all cleaners were closed for the next 3 hours.
Apparently, in at least Orissa, most businesses are closed for at least 2 hours in the middle of the day. We have assumed this means lunch breaks for the workers, but this seems to be slightly baffling to us now, considering that even restaurants are closed for the same 2 hours, too.
Since the laundry places were so inconveniently placed compared to our hotel, and we had a few other errands to run in the city before the evening, we opted to stay outside. So Maulin became our pack mule and hauled around our laundry throughout Bhubaneswar for a few hours. And our second attempted mission was to get our traveler's cheques cashed at a bank. We hailed a rickshaw and stuffed our stuff in it, going to the "best nearby bank option". We entered Bank 1, to find out that there was an error in the system, and so there was no way to get our cheques cashed. On to Bank 2, our rickshaw dropped us in a completely different area of town, where banks didn't exist, and we walked until we finally found a bank (Bank 2)! We walked in, and they said no way not here, go to the State Bank of India down the street, Bank 3. That bank didn't possess any technology for cheques, but the larger branch 10 minutes would, Bank 4. This is when it became funny. Bank 4! Bank 4, same problem, go to the other chain down the street about 1 km away. At Bank 5, the guy who normally dealt with traveler's cheques and foreign exchanges was out of the office for the day, so he told us to go to their main branch in the city.
Keep in mind, this is not a small city, per se. So we are hailing rickshaws to get to all of these banks, or getting more lost and frustrated and then hailing one anyways, who usually didn't know where we were talking about going. And also remember the large laundry sack the Maulin donned for us, so every time we entered a bank, Maulin had to open our dirty laundry bag for security so they knew we were not, in fact, terrorists with such a strange oversized bag.
At the main branch, Bank 6, the gods had mercy on us, and we finally found someone who could get us money for cheques. We got there around 3:20pm, and they close at 4pm: immaculate timing. It took us an hour to fill out paperwork to get our money, but we did, and now we are ready to go for the next few weeks. We wanted to celebrate with coffee at a big chain with our laundry, at Cafe Coffee Day. We were also excessively (and collectively) grumpy, so it was a good time for a break. However, we got to the shop and found out they were holding a week-long promotion that barred customers (or at least tourists) from buying simple orders of black coffee, and we were forced to order desserts with our drink purchases. Honestly, it was not that big of a deal, but grump Americans can become quite ugly when it comes to hunger and not getting exactly what they want, and so the desserts were finished in delicious grumbles and satisfied whines. I had a chocolate shake that tasted absolutely nothing like chocolate and more like a milky mint drink, which was exactly what I didn't want, but it was still something, so I just shrugged and swallowed down the shake.
We finally go to the dry cleaners and dropped our load off happily. He told us it would take two days (but our departure was later that day they'd finish) and would be done in the evening (but we left in the early evening), so we pushed him to make it in the afternoon before we left. And he refused to touch the female underwear (bras, panties, socks), leaving our team without underwear and clothing for 2 days. Luckily, we had some packets of detergent, and worked on our underwear in our tub and hang it all around our large room. I have been wearing the same outfit for days now.
Our team met up for dinner with a fellow Wagner student, Cindy (who's working in the city for the summer at UNICEF), and her roommate from Delhi, Deepika. They directed us to an area called Mayfair Lagoon, and it was like walking into a fairy-tale; the area was based for a 5-Star hotel, the Mayfair, that held bungalows for each visitor, and had outdoor AC and a line of western shops outside of the gated hotel. The whole area dripped of money and luxury colonial items, and I felt very much like I had just taken a portal to another part of the world. Though I am not very sure if I am alright with these kind of areas all of the time; considering my experience and field visits in Orissa (and India, for that matter), is there really a point or benefit for there to be high-end luxury hotels in areas where begging filth and abject poverty is not even a block away from the grounds? I believe it holds a very skewed, untrue viewpoint for those who don't know any better, or who prefer too much their Blackberry dinners and Chanel coffee cups. Why bother come to a developing country if you're not going to see the developing part, or why it is even called developing? I wonder.
We went to dinner there, though, at the lagoon. And though a bit pricey, the food was absolutely fabulous. We had some dishes I can't pronounce, but everything tasted fresh and clean and good. A really nice restaurant. And there were white people in the restaurant, too! Cindy and Deepika told us about their internship and travels around the area, and we had a really nice night of conversation and laughter. We got out of the restaurant and walked through part of the restaurant that had created individual, modular rooms for dinner partys in front of a well-lit square with tabla and singer on the mic.
We ended our night at a nearby pub, 10 Downing Street for drinks and dance, and i had a mocktail fruit punch that was freshly squeezed with a piece of raw apple (oh ambrosia)! It was exactly what I have been craving! But, despite the glory of the meal and drinks, it was time to get back to reality at the seedy part of town.
We headed back to our hotel just in time to see one man reading a newspaper on a chair, and a cow on the street came over to look at him, and finally ram the man straight off of his chair (light enough to not hurt him, but hard enough to make him roll onto the ground).
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