Mussoorie!

Last week was fairly uneventful at the DIC. On Friday, we had our usual EAD at the SPYM main office in the morning. In the afternoon we had a mock trial for a case involving negligent transmission of HIV that turned out to be really interesting. That night, we left on a night train for a small town in the mountains northeast of Delhi, called Mussoorie, for our mid-project. The train station in Delhi was probably the most disgusting place I’ve ever been in my whole life. It was really crowded with very dirty people, and there were huge rats digging through garbage on the tracks beside us. The train was much better than the station, but we still all had the sense we were being taken to a concentration camp somewhere. The car we were on was called a sleeper, and the seats fold out into benches you can sleep on. I put my wallet, camera, and passport in my sleeping bag while I slept, because there was no way to secure my bag. The train took about 10 hours to reach Dehradun and we took a bus from there to get to the youth hostel just outside of Mussoorie. The drive up was more thrilling than any roller coaster I’ve ever been on, because the bus didn’t seem to slow down at all for 90+ degree turns even though the dropoff was at least a few hundred feet at all times, and the road was barely wide enough to avoid oncoming traffic. At least we were bigger than most vehicles we passed. The hostel was pretty nice, besides the fact it was freezing, and we were the only ones there. On the Saturday morning we spent our time settling in. Then in the afternoon we got back on the bus and headed to Mussoorie to see the town and do a bit of shopping. The town was super-nice. Like Delhi, it had a strong culture, however it was MUCH cleaner. We could only imagine how incredible the view was, since it was really foggy out, and we could barely see 20 feet in front of us. On Sunday we stayed at the hostel doing team-building activities and catching up with each other. Monday we went back to Mussoorie and hiked up a path to a place called Gun Point. There was no fog Monday, and we were able to see snowy mountain tops in the distance (the Himalayas!). We stopped for about a one-hour photo shoot, complete with traditional Indian costumes we rented for 50 cents. Even though I’m sure we all could’ve stayed there all day, we hiked back down, got on the bus for another adrenaline rush, and went to a beautiful waterfall. On the way to the waterfall, we saw lots of monkeys, which always makes me happy. The waterfall took a bit of hiking to get to, but was well worth it. Apparently in the summer lots of people go swimming under the falls, but at that temperature we probably would’ve suffered pretty severe hypothermia. The bus took us back to Dehradun, where we ate at a small hotel restaurant with surprisingly good food. Then we got back on the train and arrived in Delhi early Tuesday morning.
Last Thursday on the way to my volunteer placement, I met a man on the metro who is a National Coordinator for the ministry dealing with village development in the Indian Government. He gave me his business card, and Annu and I went to meet him yesterday. He seems keen on networking with SPYM and sending some or all of us to a tribal village in Madhya Pradesh (a state south of here) to help with some aspect of development (infrastructure, health care, sanitation, exporting goods). It seems really promising, and I’ll talk to the group and SPYM to find out more tomorrow.
As a group, we are also trying to plan a trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. As we try to figure out all these plans, I’m starting to count down the weekends until I’m home, which doesn’t seem so far away!