pictures here!

July 29th, 2009

I am home now in Carrboro, having taken in the tragedy of our vegetable garden. So sad. I do not know who would do such a thing, and the poor orange tree looks so puny after it lost its main branch. Sigh...

My trip ended well. Delhi is a really interesting place. New Delhi has broad avenues, traffic is not too bad, and it almost feels like a large European city with lots of roundabouts and small cars driving around. Old Delhi, on the other hand, is a totally different experience. It is cramped and lively, even at 11 pm at night, and the human traffic is incredible. We went there for dinner on Friday night and I was just overwhelmed by the activity and chaos of it all. I did not see too much otherwise while there, since we were largely working or in meetings.

In Dhaka, we have had several meetings and brainstorming sessions, but we did take a day off to go to the old capital at Sarangon, which has all these colonial and pre-colonial brick buildings largely in ruins. There is a major opportunity for terrific restoration there, but the government is unable to carry it out. After that we visited a mediocre museum and also took a short boat ride on the Meghna River, one of the three mighty rivers of Bangladesh that enters the delta near Dhaka. It was a very impressive expanse of water, and there were interesting scenes to take in with fishermen and sand collecting operations (for use in construction). Bangladesh seems to be very active, with a teeming economy. It does not feel stagnant like Nepal, and there really is substantial economic growth happening. For such a poor country, it left me with a very optimistic view of the future of this place, and the resilience of its people.

I ate a great deal of Indian and Bengali food the last few weeks, and that was fine with me. There's so much variety, and I did not even get sick!

July 19th, 2009

I am currently in Dhaka (until Wednesday), and will next be in Delhi. After a week of busy schedules in Kathmandu, we had a day to unwind here a bit, with a bit of work interspersed of course.

When I arrived in Kathmandu last Thursday, I was really sick - feverish, sore throat, bad cough - and felt bad for my neighbors on the plane, who must have thought I was dying. Of course, I had to immediately see a doctor, since I did not want to stay sick long considering the tight work schedule. They were concerned also that it might be swine flu, which of course it wasn't. In any case, the doctor thought my lungs sounded bad (perhaps bronchitis), so she gave me some antibiotics. Whether that or the rest I had Thursday were the reason, I began to feel much better by the weekend, and was able to get back to my normal routine by Sunday morning (including running).

Kathmandu was an interesting city. I find it to be mellow even though it is crowded. There are not too many good places to eat, but there are a few. More importantly, there are some historical and cultural treasures in the city; I visited a Buddhist Temple up in the hills as well as the Patan Durbar Square, the central square of the city of Patan (which is directly next to Kathmandu). There was also a nice museum there, mostly filled with Hindu and Buddhist artifacts and statues.

~ Marc