We're going to Tibet!!! I'm sitting in Cafe New Orleans (where they have wireless) in Thamel. We came here today to see the travel agent, and we put down our deposit, so on July 7, we'll be leaving for Tibet. Actually I had to borrow money to put down my deposit, because Wells Fargo hates me now or something, but I already knew that. So yeah...Tibet...woo hoo.

The internet sucks, so excuse the lack of posts. There’s a wireless network that appears sometimes, so I usually try to wait to go online until it appears, but it appears pretty infrequently and it’s not a very strong signal, so occasionally I give in and pay to use the internet downstairs. I’ve been in Kathmandu for about a week and a half so far. I’ve mostly just been hanging out or going in to Thamel, the touristy part of the city. Diana left the day before yesterday, but before she left, we went river rafting, which was really fun. We went for two days on a river called Bhoti Kossi, or something like that. The second day was supposed to be like class four or five rapids. I don’t know what that means, because I’ve only been river rafting like once before, but I think it may have meant that I shouldn’t have done it, because I’ve only been river rafting like once before. Anyway it was really fun. A little scary and quite exciting when our raft flipped. It sucked though, because our guide hurt his arm. Also, I almost lost my shoes, but fortunately they both floated past me in the water. I really would not have enjoyed walking through Kathmandu barefoot. All the people we met were really cool too, as were the guides.
The day before yesterday, we went to Pharping, which is outside the city. There’s a monastery there and a Padmasambhava cave. We had a picnic on a beautiful hill that was covered with prayer flags, and we hung some prayer flags, or actually everyone else hung prayer flags and I took pictures. Yesterday there was an all day Chod ceremony. I went with Marissa to the beginning, but I left early at one of the breaks, because I just haven’t got the ability to sit still for anything for that long. Also, I spent far too much time this afternoon, sitting here making a mental list of foods I want to eat and restaurants I want to go to when I get home. What I wouldn’t do for a smoothie right now…

I'm in Katmandu right now! It's really cool. Here's an entry I started a while ago in Delhi:

So all those things I said about being alone in Dharamsala and challenging myself and all that, well, I take it all back, or at least, I take back that I feel up to the challenge. Spending one day in London alone was almost lonelier than I could handle, and being alone in Delhi is just depressing. I had over nostalgia-ized it. I thought it was Delhi that I liked, but it was just the people I was in Delhi with that I liked, not Delhi itself. While I was here, I wanted to go wander around some of the places that we first went to during orientation in January, but it’s so disgustingly hot out, and I don’t think I’m even going to leave my room more than I have to. So right now it’s my first night in Delhi. I went back to the guesthouse that I stayed at with Justin, Tom, and Kendell when we were all in Delhi just before leaving. I tried to stay awake this afternoon so I could call home once it was a decent hour and so that I could sleep tonight and hopefully not be too jetlagged, but I fell asleep anyway and didn’t wake up again until it was too late to go out (well not really actually, but I didn’t want to wander around a place I didn’t know after dark trying to find a phone), and now it’s almost midnight, and I can’t sleep, so so much for that whole plan. Also, so much for the whole going to Dharamsala/being independent plan. Tomorrow, I’m going to try to figure out if there’s a way I can get to Katmandu in the next week. I want to be in a city where I know people, and Marissa, Diana, Amalia, Dan, Amber, Steve, and Karen are all there right now, so that’s where I want to be. My visa expires in about a week, so hopefully I can find a way to get there before that happens so that I don’t have to deal with extending it. I guess it’s a little sad that I can’t handle being alone for even a few days, but that’s just how I am I guess, and I don’t want spend a few weeks being miserable just to try to prove that I can. I just wish I could sleep so that I can wake up so that I can try to find a way to get to Katmandu. I’ll go however I can, plane, train, bus, whatever (well actually just plane, train, or bus I guess). I really, really hope this works out. I think maybe I took embracing the ambiguity a little too far and should have made more concrete plans. I never really enjoyed the ambiguity that much; I kind of like to have a plan. On the bright side, I did see an elephant on the side of the road today. TII.

Okay, so yeah, I’m in Katmandu now. I went to talk to a travel agent about getting to Nepal before my Indian visa ran out, and he called a few airlines and said they were all booked, except business class, and I’m already worried that I underestimated in my grant proposal, but I saw an advertisement on his wall for a Delhi-Katmandu bus, which it turned out was going to leave in a few hours, so I went to exchange some money, bought a ticket, packed, checked out of the guesthouse, and got on the bus, and that’s where I’ve been for two days. Not quite two days really. The bus left at around three in the afternoon on Thursday, and just got in around five or six this morning (it being Saturday as I write this). I even have a shiny, new Nepali visa in my passport. If only getting a new Indian visa had been so easy (at the border, I was required to fill out a form and to give them a passport picture and $30 cash). I think I’m going to sleep for a few hours now, since I didn’t get much sleep on the bus. My seat wouldn’t stay back, and I’m not sure what time zone my body thinks it’s in, but I think it’s somewhere between here and London. Also, we didn’t stop for dinner last night until around eleven, and we got in pretty early, so I don’t think anyone slept much. Also (this doesn’t really have to do with anything, it just amused me), last night there were a chicken and three chicks wandering around where we were eating dinner.

So I’m really glad that I came to Katmandu. I’m staying in Marissa’s room for now, and Diana lives across the hall. Dan and Amber live upstairs, and Karen just moved to an apartment nearby. She and Steve were staying in Thamel, but he left today, so she moved to Boudha, where we are. I’m glad I got to see Steve one last time before he left though. We all got together for dinner last night. It was sad to have to say goodbye all over again though.

So I feel like this second trip to India is really starting soon. I went with Amy to the airport and sent her off with my huge (almost 30 kg) suitcase (sorry Amy). After I got back into London, I wandered around a bit. I tried my luck at the Indian consulate again, managed to find it this time, which is better than last time, but I was told that I’d need five business days to get a new visa, so that wasn’t going to work out, but the man there did tell me that I can probably just get my student visa extended when I get to Delhi. I was glad to hear that, although I’m not too excited about spending more time in Delhi than I have to (Amy and I looked up the weather in Delhi, and it does not look like it’s going to be fun). Anyway, hopefully that works out. I mean, I don’t really have to go back to Dharamsala, but I think it’ll be easier for me to work on things while I’m there rather in a new city, and when I left, I assumed I’d be returning, so I don’t feel like I’ve said proper goodbyes to everyone that I wanted to before I left the first time. Also, maybe this will sound really silly, I don’t think I said a proper goodbye to the place itself, and I often find myself missing it. I think I feel more at home there than I do here, which makes sense in some ways, because I’ve spent a lot of time there, but also seems strange in some ways because here I at least speak the language, but English will get you around there anyway, and I speak with an American accent, so just because I speak English here, doesn’t mean that I don’t sound out of place anyway. I’ll be sad to leave though, or at least I was sad to see Amy go. I’m such a lame person to travel with, so I don’t know if she had fun anyway, but I had a good time. I almost feel like this part of the trip has started already though. I realized that this summer, or at least the first part before I go to Katmandu, I’ll really be traveling alone. It’s probably not a big deal for most people, but (don’t laugh at me too much for admitting this) I won’t even go to the cafeteria at Swarthmore if I don’t think there will be someone there that I can eat with. I feel like this summer is going to push me to be more okay with not having people I know around. At least I’ll still know people in Dharamsala, but not like anyone I can go to dinner with or anything like that. I don’t know if any of that makes any sense, but oh well. So anyway, I feel like that part of the trip is starting, because I’m staying in a hostel alone, and I’ve been wandering around London alone all day (after the consulate, I went to the Museum of London (I found it kind of boring, but there were some interesting things, and it was free, so I’m not going to complain), and I walked around the outside of St Paul’s cathedral (it cost a lot to go inside, so I didn’t go)). So anyway, now I’m here in the hostel, contemplating my impending return to India and contemplating starting all those things I’ve been putting off for two weeks and wondering how I still have so much stuff if I sent so much home with Amy (seriously, the suitcase would barely close, even when it was fully expanded).
I think I may also feel like I’m going back, because for the last few days, I’ve had clothes hanging all over the room drying. I was so excited about finding a laundromat somewhere here, and I did find a few finally, but they were so expensive (at least $7/load), that I just washed my clothes in the sink. Some of my clothes anyway. The bathroom was tiny, so I didn’t really think I could manage to wash my jeans or my fleece, so I guess they’ll just have to wait until I get to India, where everything will probably get so wet that I won’t bother to wash anything, because nothing will ever dry anyway. I should stop with this train of thought though; it just makes me question the decision to go back for the summer. It’ll be fun though, and at least I won’t have to return to Linens-n-Things and my favorite line, ‘thank you for calling Linens-n-Things. This is Katie speaking. How may I help you today?’ Let’s just hope I didn’t underestimate on the grant proposal budget.
I feel like I should go out and do something on my last night in Europe, but I suspect tonight will actually just be internet, trying to repack the suitcase better than I did, and sleep. Tomorrow hopefully I’ll see Lucy though, if I can get any phone around here to work (I tried two payphones. One wouldn’t take my coins, and the other ate my money (I liked the first one better)). I should work on that being productive thing for a little bit though. You’d think it’s like summer or something with the way I’m slacking off.

How quikly things can change. All of a sudden, I'm not in India anymore, and some things seem so different. I feel like I've been all over. I mean I haven't really, but I spent most of the semester in one city, and now since I've left India, I've been to London, Edinburgh, Killarney, Cork, Dublin, and Paris (which is where I currently am). I don't feel like I've felt much reverse culture shock, but maybe that comes later, or maybe just ignored it or something. I admit that I probably got more excited about going in a grocery store than most people do, but I think that's about it. I wonder if I'll feel any culture shock when I go back. It's strange when I think of where everyone is now. That group that was like my surrogate family for a semester is now all over the world. I'm starting to stress out about things that I'd sort of put on hold for a semester (mostly worrying about my last year at Swarthmore and what I'll do after that last year). Traveling with Amy has been really fun though. I think we're a little hampered by our desire not to spend money, but we've found decent cheap food and activities. The sun is finally shining too. It felt like the rain followed us. It would only get to be sunny the day we left a city, but we just got to Paris, and the sun is out, and it's warm (it's been so cold so far. Imagine how shocked I was when I got to London where it was about 50 degrees after leaving Delhi where it was at least 90). I think I finally found a laundromat too. I've been dragging dirty clothes all over in hopes of not needing to hand wash them when I get back to India, but for some reason, I haven't been able to find any laundromats so far, but we passed one today, so maybe I'll get a break from bucket washing my clothes. Although, I'm also tempted to just send my clothes home dirty in the suitcase that I'm sending home with Amy (sorry parents). I've been pretty lazy about taking pictures, so I don't know if I'll have any to post, but maybe I'll take some here in Paris. I should go now though, because we're meeting Monica for dinner, which is so exciting, because I haven't seen Monica in so long. Au revoir.