Week 8, India: Jaipur, Elephants, and Efficiency

The experiences

This week I traveled to Jaipur mostly to see the elephants at the Elephant Sanctuary just outside the city and as it turns out that's pretty much all I did.  In 2011 the government shut down the circus and all of the elephants were transported to the sanctuary where they are much more humanely cared for. The sanctuary is still growing as there are still some off site areas where elephants are kept but the routine is the same regardless of where the elephant lives. The elephants will work (giving tourists rides) from the age of 18 to 48, when they retire, and only work for the occasional wedding.

The program was organized by Volunteering with India and I can't say enough good things about them. They greeted me at the train station and took me to a guesthouse/homestay giving me the quick rundown and I met two girls from Mexico here on a longer term volunteer project teaching at the orphanage. The coordinators organized for us to go to see a new Bollywood movie. Needless to say but I was very very very excited. The theater turned out to be a gorgeous single screen theater (Raj Mandir) and everything was just perfect, you could buy Ruby, Emerald or Diamond tickets I got a normal sized popcorn and coke (yes this is a dig against enormous sizes in the US) and enjoyed a crazy but entertaining revenge thriller, NH10 (national highway 10). The experience of seeing a film in another neighborhood even is wonderful (Megan and I seeing Skeleton Twins in Seattle was far more fun than it would have been in Wisconsin because they laughed at the right times even if the humor was dark--sorry WI). The Jaipur audience cheered and clapped and laughed the whole way through--no holding back.

The lobby is just beautiful

Caught this guy and many others taking pictures and video of me

The interior is also pretty darn cool

The next day I started the daily routine of leaving the house at 5am to get to the home of a new BFF. She's 36, single, childless, super sweet and only occasionally sassy. Her name is Gulab, meaning rose, and is kind of small weighing in at only 1,800 kilos. Every morning I'd clean up the leftover grass from her meal of sugarcane (takes her about 6 or 7 hours to eat) and clean up her "waste" (which I don't usually do for my friends). I'd sweep up her little apartment ( which I do do for my friends) and then give her a thorough exfoliation with a scrub brush (normally this is just a trip to the spa for fun). After that, she'd leave me to go meet the other tourists and I'd head back to the house for a shower, chai and a nap.

She kinda likes hugs

Twice during my week, we got to go make Chapati for the elephants. Chapati is the small round flatbread you get with a thali (plate of food). It is much smaller than a naan and is made of different flour. But making Chapati for elephants is very different than for humans. I was alone volunteering during the week so my first Chapati day was me and Totoram our driver making it and it was a process. It was very hard work turning 10 kilos of flour and a few gallons of water into 18 perfectly even plate sized circles. Totoram helped me out a few times during the week and I learned a lot from him, his appreciation for the elephants is most definitely awe-inspiring. Gogen, the site coordinator, and I got to talk a lot about the VWI company and how it got started, a lot on the background of the elephants and innumerable other topics that we stumbled on in the wee hours of the morning including the South Africa/New Zealand nail-biter and Australia defeating India in the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup (I still know nothing about cricket).

My last Chapati day I was joined by two other Americans (one from Cleveland area and one from Orange County, CA) visiting from Korea where they are stationed for the Airforce. I was pretty excited by this since it took a lot of work to make Chapati the first time. So we had three tourists plus Gogen sweating over the giant mass of dough instead of just me and Totoram (who got to nap this time around) :). After we were able to help paint two of the elephants who were on their way to wedding. This was nerve wracking as the elephant owner is the one who painted the designs on the elephants and we had to fill in his lines with color. Surprise: I have never been able to color inside the lines. But I did okay and didn't feel like I messed it up at all. As you can imagine there was a lot of shouting to keep the elephants still during this process which makes you feel a little sad just instinctively but I flashed back to something I read in the ashram guide in Vrindavan, that Hindi is a very emotional language and what you may perceive as shouting is just a normal conversation, free from anger.

Sadhir the elephant owner starting the outline.

One elephant finished!

Sadhir putting some final touches on elephant 2

The lessons:

• Say yes to the right people. 
• I let Sandi in Amritsar give me additional freckles via Mendi (since one of the ladies there was asking me what my original spots were). But when I was leaving the Prity family I said no to getting an actual Mendi design by one of the daughters. Sometimes I marvel at my own stupidity.
• Either way I'm totally Mendi free.
• Don't walk down stairs blindly at 5am. If you miss a step you could seriously hurt your ankle...I added an ace bandage to my pack today. In my defense the stone floors with the fine layer of dust that never goes away does make things slippery.
• Sometimes there just isn't a better way.
• I don't often come up with good creative ideas. My mom got the idea for an Easy Button that instead played "Let it Go". I mean that's really good--just some copyright issues with which I of course crushed her dreams. I think of how we do things almost constantly. How can we make it better quality or more efficient. My job for the last 5 years was all about that talent. We spent most of our time thinking about these things at Epic. So when I was cleaning up elephant dung, various solutions kept coming to mind, which when I stepped outside my head I recalled two great conversations that just made me stop it. 
• Sanjay in Amritsar named his hostel Jugaadus which translates as:
• Jugaad (alternatively Juggaar) is a colloquial Hindi-Urdu word that can mean an innovative fix or a simple work-around,[1] used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a complicated issue. It is used as much to describe enterprising street mechanics as for political fixers. This meaning is often used to signify creativity to make existing things work or to create new things with meager resources.(wikipedia)
•  It's the Indian way. And they are really good at it. I made a few sly remarks about having duct tape in my bag if he needed any which was more a mental joke for me recounting The Red Green Show's obsession with duct tape fixes (youtube Canadian moment of zen).
• But then there was a more hilarious thought about a sushi dinner in Lancaster, PA where Liang divulged his enterprising idea to make gourmet whale cheese.  This was a big idea, we all laughed, enjoying a mind that could come up with the idea but then Jeremy topped it all by coming up with an idea for an efficient extraction system run by dolphins (immediately becoming the Chief Engineering Officer of the company). This is what project managers do, we solve problems :). If you can't tell I'm really enjoying this trip not just because I get to see new things, meet new people and enjoy myself but I get to remember so many wonderful things over time. Thank you all for giving me those moments and memories.

Interesting

• Elephants are extremely dexterous with their trunks, it's way better than an opposable thumb (or even two).
• Overall I've found that this country makes napping and sleeping very easy. Without knowing it you've napped all afternoon and that's okay. I find this very intriguing because standard bedding in India includes a very very firm and thin mattress covered with a decorative fabric, firm and thin pillow and a blanket--you may remember that in Mumbai I gushed about western bed and bedding, this is why. And I can't even really describe the noises at night; it could be monkeys fighting, dogs barking, or some 3am prayers, take your pick. Other travelers have speculated it's the heat that makes it so easy to sleep. Bottom line, I didn't get out much and see Jaipur. It is a shame because this place is amazing with some great sights to see.