Everywhere we go, there is poverty and pollution, sexism and corruption, hassle and suffering; at the same time, everywhere we go, there are welcoming people and important religious sites, delicious foods and brilliant colors, interesting architectural styles and catchy songs. We laugh dozens of times a day, but sometimes it’s just because that’s the best way to stay sane amidst all the chaos. India is not an easy place to travel, but it can be an incredibly rewarding place to travel -- already I feel thankful for the experiences I’ve had here and the things I’ve been learning.

But all this ambivalence I’ve been feeling -- this emotional whipping back and forth, a hundred times a day, between things sacred and profane, beautiful and hateful, life-affirming and agonizing -- can make it really hard to figure out how to begin to tell the stories. But enough equivocating; I’ll just try to dive in.

In the last update, Patrick described our first few days in Delhi, which we spent recouping from jetlag with Season 3 of The Wire, and our amazing luck for meeting warm and welcoming people in the city of Chandigarh. As if on cue, just hours after Patrick had posted that entry, a friendly gentleman waiting next to us in line to purchase train tickets invited us for dinner at his home that evening. We spent a nice few hours with the Prakash family, talking about India, America and New Zealand (where many members of their family now live), and looking through an album of wedding photos from a granddaughter’s recent wedding. By the time we left Chandigarh, we’d added whole pages of contact information to our journals from the numerous friends we’d made, and were feeling pretty amazed by all the attention.

The next day, we headed east, up into the low foothills of the Himalayas to the town of Rishikesh, which lines the banks of the Ganges near its headwaters, and is known to some as the “yoga capital of the world.” We went there to meet up with one of my best friends from DeKalb, Hannah, who’s been travelling in India and Nepal since October. It had been a couple years since I’d seen her, but within minutes we were laughing and talking each other’s ears off, just like we used to late at night over tea in her dad’s living room or parked in my driveway for hours, unable to end the conversation. The three of us spent five fun days in Rishikesh together -- eating yummy thalis and steaming hot apple samosas, hiking to a waterfall, listening to the nightly chants of the aarti ceremony on the banks of the Ganges, and even watching one of the omnipresent street cows munch its way through a flaming pile of burning rubbish one night.

During our time together in Rishikesh, Patrick and I talked Hannah into travelling with us for a little while, and on Monday the 29th we all headed down to Haridwar, an hour’s bus ride from Rishikesh, to spend the day exploring before catching a night train to Lucknow. In Haridwar, we poked through shops selling glittering bangles, Indian sweets, colorful fabrics and gleaming stainless-steel dining ware in a bazaar that lined both sides of the narrow, winding streets. We walked down to the banks of the Ganges, where pilgrims were participating in bathing ceremonies along the ghats -- stair-steps leading down into the water.

On board my first night train in India, I unfolded the stack of clean white railway-issue bedding and climbed into my narrow upper berth -- Hannah below me in the middle berth, and Patrick an arm’s length away on the upper berth across from mine. I slept lightly and fitfully on that ride, unable to find a comfortable position, and arrived in Lucknow with that strange sensation that the world is still rocking back and forth around you, even when you’re on solid ground.

Lucknow is the capital of Uttar Pradesh, and marks a good midpoint between Haridwar to the north and Bodhgaya to the southeast, which is where we were headed; it’s also a city with a lot of Mughal history. The Mughals were the Muslim rulers of vast swaths of India during the 16th and 17th centuries; Shah Jehan, a Mughal emperor, was the builder of the Taj Mahal. We were looking forward to checking out some Mughal architecture and sampling some Mughlai food -- tasty mutton dishes and spicy kebabs and thin crepe-like roti breads -- before continuing our journey to Bodhgaya.

We also took advantage of the Lucknow branch of Fab India -- a rapidly expanding chain of clothing and home decor shops (there’ll be one in the U.S. any minute now) -- to purchase some salwar kameez outfits for me. Salwar kameez -- a knee-length top with split sides worn over baggy pants with a long coordinated scarf called a dupatha -- is a common outfit for Indian women, and a helpful tool for western women hoping to combat some of the stares and occasional street harassment by Indian men that can result from even conservative western clothes. (An added bonus of the salwar kameez top that I was grateful for yesterday is that it actully provides a fair amount of privacy when squatting to pee in a rice field -- the long split sides form a sort of screen. You never know when that’s going to come in handy.)

From Lucknow on February 1st, we took another night train (on which I’m happy to say I slept much better) to the city of Gaya in the state of Bihar -- currently the poorest state in India, with a largely rural population. Our destination was the nearby town of Bodhgaya, where, 2550 years ago, under a banyan tree, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. The fourth generation of the Bodhi tree -- planted from a cutting of a cutting of a cutting of the original -- still grows at the Mahabodhi temple in Bodhgaya, marking the spot of the enlightenment. Consequently, Bodhgaya is the world’s holiest pilgrimage site for Buddhists, and there are dozens of temples scattered throughout the town, representing various countries with Buddhist traditions -- Japan, Bhutan, Tibet, Cambodia, Thailand, Sri Lanka. A large community of Tibetan Buddhists spends part of the winter here, and the Dalai Lama is a frequent visitor.

As luck would have it, we arrived in Bodhgaya on the same day as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and were able to attend a reception the following day at which he spoke after enshrining some Buddha relics in a newly built temple. The town was packed over the weekend -- with hordes of maroon and saffron-robed monks and nuns; crowds of white-sari-swathed Sri Lankan pilgrims; bands of beaded and dreadlocked westerners from dozens of countries; and swarms of bowl-waving beggars of all ages. Bodhgaya has been growing steadily quieter throughout the week as we’ve stayed on.

The main reason we’d come to Bodhgaya was to visit a friend of Hannah’s, whom she’d met at a Hindi language school they both attended a couple months ago up north in Mussoorie. Diane Kirwin, Hannah’s friend, is the founder of a nonprofit organization, KIRF Bodhgaya, that is setting up schools for poor children in some of the villages around this area. We were able to visit two of the schools yesterday and meet the children. I think we were all impressed by how much they had already learned in the limited time the schools have been running -- they could recite and recognize all their English letters and do complex arithmetic problems; some kids even had quite a bit of English vocabulary. At the same time, it was clear how vast the needs of these poorest-of-the-poor communities are. Many of the children are malnourished, and their parents -- mostly tenant farmers of the lowest, untouchable caste, called Dhalits -- have little hope of breaking the cycle of poverty without a significant amount of assistance -- far more than the local development community can yet provide.

On Saturday, after a little over a week here, we’ll be leaving Bodhgaya -- saying goodbye to our small and tidy guesthouse, which has been pleasant enough despite the clouds of mosquitoes that seem to be breeding in the bathroom and flowing in from the open stairwell to the roof; and to the friendly owner of the store across the street with whom we chat every evening while we buy bottled water and crackers; and to the eclectic assortment of Tibetan, Bhutanese, Chinese and Indian food that graces the menus of the restaurants throughout town; and to Diane and the other KIRF Bodhgaya volunteers we’ve met here.

Our next stop is Kolkata, where we’ll bid a sad goodbye to Hannah after a few more days. After a week in Kolkata and the surrounding area of West Bengal, Patrick and I will endure our longest train ride yet -- nearly 30 hours -- down the east coast to Chennai (a.k.a. Madras) and the state of Tamil Nadu. I’m excited to continue our explorations of this crazy subcontinent, and will try to update you on some more of our adventures, frustrations, and observations soon. Much love to all.