Settling into Manali

The first few days in Manali were an adjustment time, especially for the students, most of whom had never been overseas. Arriving in India is an assault on the senses. Manali is a fairly compact, crowded, dirty and polluted city nestled at the foothills of the Himalayas, and is a bustling honeymoon destination because of the scenery outside town and the lovely summer climate.

Pedestrians share the crowded, pot-hole pocked roads with motorcyclists, auto-rickshaws, trucks and buses, as well as an assortment of dogs and cows, and the occasional goat. There is the rank smell of sewage and piles of garbage balanced by spices and sizzling fried dough and meat from the sidewalk vendors. Destitute children and lame beggars contrast with the vivid colors of the rich fabrics worn by even relatively poor women, and the carnival like atmosphere of the pedestrian Mall Road.

Our hotel could euphemistically be described as “modest.” The students quickly adjusted to the spare, but colorful rooms, and to the routine of heating water for bucket baths, but had a harder time with Indian food and difficulties with reliable internet access. By the third day of paranthas for breakfast and some combination of roti with lentils, rice, and paneer in tasty sauces, the kids were ready to riot. Fortunately, the hotel staff were quite accommodating and broadened the diet to include chicken and mutton stews, though the recognizable body parts were a bit disconcerting. The students discovered that if they hiked ~45 minutes up the road to Old Manali, they could go to fancy restaurants catering to tourists with pizza, pasta, crepes, and a variety of ice cream dishes, accompanied by pop music or karaoke. They made a bee-line for “Drifter’s,” “Dylan’s,” and “Bella Vista” every evening thereafter. So much for our plans for evening bonding experiences and cultural activities for the immersion in India experience…

The immediate tasks for the weekend were to obtain Salwar Kameez “suits” for the girls and cell phones or sim cards. Buying clothes in India is a treat for many women. There is such a beautiful array of material, now with many lovely embroidered patterns on them. You walk around town, find the material that appeals to you, barter with the shop owner, then take the fabric to a tailor who measures the suit and sews it for you.

Obtaining a sim card was a bit more complex. Because of terrorist activity, in order to buy a sim card, we had to have additional passport photos taken and show proof of residency, as well as fill out several forms. Fortunately, we had Sunny, who capably guided us through this process and attested to our identities. Every hotel now also required copies of our passport. That reminded me of visiting Hungary during it’s communist rule.

While still exhausting, getting settled in, it was fun seeing kids' excitement and dismay. With the initial mundane tasks accomplished, we settled in for our work and study at Lady Willingdon Hospital and the villages.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation…or Adventures Teaching Undergrads in India

As my Twitter followers know, I just returned from an eye-opening trip to India, where I was part of a faculty team for U Maryland undergrads. I was too busy and exhausted prepping, teaching, and studying there to blog, but want to relive and share some of this trip via my tweets, photos, and jotted notes of impressions.

Prelude…or why am I doing this?

When daughter, Heather, was 15, she persuaded me to take herand my son on a volunteer trip to India. It was transformative for all of us, fueling my interest in tropical infectious diseases and social justice issues, as well as my kids’ later career interests.

Heather has continued her interest in global and public health, and is now pursuing an MPH at U MD. As part of her work there, she put together this comprehensive summer program for undergrads, “Summer India: Global Health & Development,” and I was drafted as one of the faculty members, appointed “Visiting Senior Research Scientist” at the university, given my background in Infectious Diseases and clinical research, and that I had previously been to India. The other faculty were Mili Duggal, a PhD candidate and wonderfully down to earth, kind person, and Lis Maring (who was not able to join us until later into the trip), faculty in Family Life Sciences at U MD, and who has worked and taught in Varanasi, India.

The trip was logistically quite complex for a number of reasons. In addition to the didactic coursework—Heather put together an amazing syllabus—there were experiential and research components. The students were divided into three groups and rotated each week: observing at Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali, joining village health care workers in assessing children’s health, or spending time at a rural health clinic in Jibhi, 3-4 hours from Manali. The final week was devoted to each student working on a research project of their choosing.

I helped arrange the research component, working with Dr. Philip Alexander, the director of the LWH, and Jayanth Devasundaram, an epidemiologist I recently met here in the states. Dr. Philip had asked for help in addressing their problem with tuberculosis, with many patients with drug-resistant (MDR) TB. We had only a sketchy plan before we left the states, and modified our approach as we went along, based on conditions we encountered there.

We set off!

The trip started a bit tenuously. I didn’t even get my visa until the day before, when my brother, aka St. George, was kind enough to wrest it out of Travisa’s clutches and deliver it to Mili.

I met the kids at BWI and was initially struck by their enthusiasim, and how YOUNG they all appeared, feeling OMG, what am I getting into? They were remarkably good sports on the trip though, which included the long flight, followed by a 9 hr wait in the Delhi airport, then a puddle-jumper to Kullu, which flew through a beautiful valley at the base of the Himalayas. We had to wait for some time in Kullu for Sunny and Heather to meet us—I guess there were more sheep blocking the road than they had counted on. (Sunny is a wonderful young man we met in Dharamsala 7 years ago, and he handled the logistics on the ground for all of us. We could never have done this trip without his guidance). But Sunny had a friend, Srita, who worked for Kingfisher and who was kind enough to ply us with chai while we waited.

There is a “taxi mafia” at the airport, and transportation has to be made using their services. Four taxis and a hair-raising 2 hour drive later, we arrived in Manali and settled in for the duration...(to be continued)