Last day in Bhubaneswar

I am devastated. 10 pages of blog posts out of the window, all because my laptop corrupted my file and now my long memory has sunk into the technological abyss that is Apple.

I will try to redeem my posts, though they might be less graphic and beautifully written as they were when I first wrote them.

I do believe my last post was about being in Bhubaneswar for the last time.

Our team – though excited to sleep in and planned the day accordingly - was woken up on our last day in Bhubaneswar by the front desk, begging us to come to breakfast because they had made us boiled eggs. Their attempt of a peace offering, though small, was well appreciated, but we still do not think highly on this hotel. We walked around briefly in the already sweltering heat to pick up some final things before packing, and headed back quickly to our room. Instead of us all going to the caves near town, we opted to take it easy and run a few errands before we started our crazy few days of constant travel. I took a nap.
I woke up with Maulin and Molly going to get our freshly pressed, crispy laundry from the cleaners. It is hard to express in text to relief and joy we all felt of having real clean clothing; after roughly 3 weeks of being soggy and smelly, we felt like humans again. Though, the cleaners did manage to burn a few holes in select clothing, but beggars can’t be choosers over here in India.
One of our last goals was to find a spiritual bookshop that Gobardhan at GV had told us to go to for some great Aryuvedic health snacks and supplements, Gita Press. Some men told us the night before that it was over by one of the several temples in town, no problem. But alas, here in India things can never really be that easy. We walked around aimlessly looking for this shop, ping-ponging the main busy street, to no avail. We asked several men, who all pointed us in the opposite directions, implying that no one really knew what we were talking about.
Something I don’t remember if I’ve pointed out yet; the people we try talking to here for help, usually men, do not like talking to us women. It doesn’t matter who is trying to talk to them; they will always direct their responses to Maulin. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m white or a female (I’m assuming the latter), but it can get frustrating after a while, feeling invisible and all. This happened when looking for Gita Press. The idea was my brainchild, and I would ask the men, but they would beckon over Maulin after my inquiry and begin talking to him with their answers. I don’t know how it would matter exactly; I assume that they’d have the same response whether it was Maulin or me to whom they were talking. In any case, we were led in circles and considered it a failed mission.
After eating a pleasant lunch at the same place we ate the night before, we packed up early and headed to the airport for our Indigo flight. The airport is so small that it wasn’t even open yet when we arrived, so we had to wait outside until someone came and told us they were ready.
They made me open up my big luggage and rummage through it because apparently my jump rope could have possible been a weapon of mass destruction.
It has come to my attention that I, much like an infant, sleep at the instant feeling of moving vehicles (cars, trains, planes, etc.). It seems that the whirring of the motor and lulling motions zen me out to the point of oblivion, and I am rendered useless until I close my eyes and doze off. So, I tried very hard to stay awake during our 2-hour flight, but the buzzing of the seat defeated my efforts, and I was out for an hour.

The team arrived in hot, sticky Delhi, and was hit with a kind of culture shock. We had grown accustomed to the underdeveloped rural world in Orissa, and were a little taken back by the loud blaring of the city. The airport was shiny and buzzing with loads of people. And most differently, there were quite a lot of foreigners (aka white people). Having been 1 of 5 white people within a 20-mile radius, this was something I surprisingly had to readjust to. Also, when landing at a restaurant for a late dinner, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the restaurant had everything we wanted AND they understood our English well enough to make our ordering process the smoothest we had had in weeks!

We got to our new hotel, Ananda, in Karol Bagh to meet up in a sweet reunion with 2 fellow Wagner students who did their project work in Mumbai, Amber and Tara. It was nice to see more than just our team of familiar faces.
The rooms were clean, and I shared a bed with Maulin because there were no separate beds in the rooms. This was alright, seeing as we were only going to nap for 4 hours that night in order to make our 4am train to Agra in the morning.