A Taste of India
I have wanted to visit India for a very long time, but never seriously looked into planning a trip there. This past week I was lucky to be invited to present my work at the annual Central and Southeast Asia Fulbright conference, being held in India. So only 5 days after my husband arrived in Tashkent, we boarded a plane to India.
The conference was a great opportunity for me to meet other scholars in the region and for us all to share our work. I attended some very interesting sessions, including a talk from a biologist who specializes in conservation. He is currently in Nepal studying the tiger population. I’m still hoping to obtain a regional travel grant to visit Nepal. If that does work out, I plan to visit him in the nature preserve and get an up close look at the work he is doing. I was also able to spend some time with the other two Fulbright Scholars in Uzbekistan.
I was able to also share my work here in Uzbekistan, even though I’m only a month into my project. My presentation was well received and I got many questions from other scholars about positive psychology. One of the diplomats from the US Embassy in India even asked me if I would share my slides with her.
This was one of the best organized conferences that I have ever attended. Everything went exactly to schedule. We even had every meal together so that we could network and just chat, including morning and afternoon tea time. We got to try some authentic Indian foods, including a meal served entirely on a banana tree leaf. I found it really interesting to try all these new dishes but also struggled to find food bland enough for my Minnesota palette. Luckily the breakfast buffet had waffles, french toast, and even bacon. Three things that do not exist in Uzbekistan. We also treated ourselves to one dinner at the fancy Italian restaurant in our hotel in Delhi.
We didn’t have much time for sightseeing in Kochi, where the conference was being held but we did get out on a riverboat cruise and also spent one afternoon seeing the historical sites in Fort Kochi. The thing that stood out the most to me in Kochi was the amount of trash that could be seen in heaps along the roads and even floating in the river. They experienced a major flood this past fall which devastated the town. They have rebuild a lot of it but I can’t help wondering if the trash is related to the flooding or if they lack regular sanitation practices there.
After the conference ended we flew to Delhi for two nights. We took a day trip over to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and other historic sites. This was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. Agra itself looked similar to Delhi but on a much smaller scale, however, the historic site were spectacular. We saw the Taj Mahal from the outside only, since it was a Friday and was closed to tourists. That is the day Muslims use the Taj’s mosque for prayer.
We also visited the “Baby Taj”, which is older and much smaller than the actual Taj Mahal. It was just as impressive, in my opinion.
Finally, we spent a long time exploring Agra Fort.
In the garden of Agra Fort there is a man with seed for the chipmunks. If you give him a few rupees he’ll put seed in your hand and then call over a chipmunk to eat it from you. For some reason I was the only person in my family who wanted to hold a chipmunk…
For those of you who don’t follow international news that closely, while we were in India the conflict between them and Pakistan escalated to the brink of war. I’m not going to go into the details of the recent conflict but you can read about it in this news article:
We were far from the Northern border with Pakistan so we didn’t feel that we were in any danger, however, our flight back to Tashkent normally goes directly over Pakistan. On Wednesday Pakistan closed their airspace and flights were cancelled. Since then all passenger flights have been rerouted so as to avoid Pakistani airspace. We were scheduled to return to Uzbekistan on a 2pm flight arriving in Tashkent at 5:30pm. After several flight delays we finally left Delhi airport around 8:30pm. We were rerouted to go South toward Mumbai and then flew West over the Arabian Sea to somewhere near Dubai. Then we headed north and flew over Iran and finally back to Tashkent. We landed in Tashkent about 3:30am. What should have been a 3 hour and 20 minute flights turned into just over 6 hours, preceded by about 7 hours of sitting in the airport. Needless to say we are exhausted, but happy to be back home here in Tashkent.
Experience Fulbright 