Quick Update

Hello all,

I'm currently in Jaipur. We finished out travels to Jaisalmer (the furthest west in Rajastan) and then we skipped over Jodhpur due to lack of time and we're in Jaipur heading to Agra tonight. So far our trip has been very busy as we've been seeing a lot and the sun is extremely draining. The temperature is approximately 42-48 degrees Celsius and can go well over the 50s as well, or at least the locals say that. I don't particularly want to experience that. In Jaisalmer, we rode camels into the desert and stayed a night in the sand dunes. The hours between 1-3 became too hot to travel, so there was an afternoon break where we had lunch and slept each day and it continues even into this city where people don't work and take their time to relax/sleep back home. In the desert we were engulfed by a sandstorm. I survived a sandstorm! it was a cool experience as the whole group was sleeping and then all of a sudden we were hit by what felt like sand pellets and blinded by the sand lifted into the air. Being disoriented I hid under the blanket, I peered out to see Lauren sitting straight up confused and not sure what to do, so i pulled her under the blanket and we just sat there with sand in our eyes trying to breath for about a few hours. At midnight exactly, the sandstorm gave way and we opened out eyes and stepped out to see that our shoes were buried, the mattress was under a bunch of sand and our hair had so much sand that it couldn't be washed out properly even with multiple showers. Overall a great time there as the culture is a lot slower and people are genuinely friendly.

Having a lot of culture shock as the city is much different from Mussoorie where people will tend to keep their personal space and distance.

When I have the chance to later, I'll write about the culture, and the architecture/construction in India.

Cheers,

Jay

The Trek

 

The Interns at the Himalayan Glacier Mountains

 The Team - Interns + Franks Family

 

 Glacier Mountains 

 Snow on the mountain top =)

 At the Top 

 Heading Back from the Trek

Just got back from the trek with the office and ended up getting 13,600ft above sea level. I was able to go on the first hike EVER, and up the Himalayan Mountain to check out the snow glaciers that we are able to see every day from the office. It was a great experience and we were able to see God's creations. Hiking up was fun because we did it in the rain, and for the final night we slept under the stars since the weather was clear. Lucky for us we had a mountain sheep dog that traveled with us all the way up and guarded us all night long. Basically, it barked all night long waking us up every hour allowing us to see the stars. Clearest sky I've ever seen. As a reward, whenever the dog slept on us or on our sleeping bag and barked, we picked up our shoes, hit it, and told it to go away and stop barking because it was keeping everyone up.

I'll be heading to Rajastan, Western part of India tomorrow morning at 3:00am, and then traveling around there until the 20th. From the 20th I'll be going to Goa (South India) and then heading home on the 31st of May. I'm not sure how internet connections will be where I'm going, or if I'll even have internet but I'll be sure to try and keep this updated and keep up with y'all.

See you soon,

Jay

Nearing the End

As of last Monday, we have officially completed the two projects for Bihar which were ECFC and TIM. For the rest of the week the other interns focused on completing the projects from Pune. Huberth (the indian architect), Graham (the engineer on staff) and myself went to do a one time consultation on Tuesday. A woman from the States planned on starting up an agricultural farm in the Himalayan mountains which concentrates on organic farming and other "green" eco methods. We took a 2-3 hour drive up and around the mountain to where her site was located and found out that construction had already begun. Long story short, we analyzed the site, gave suggestions for the construction and went back home to write up the report and send out suggestions from both architectural and engineering perspectives with regards to what she wants to do with the site. Overall it was an interesting experience and it was fun to go on a day trip and see other aspects of eMi2.

As for the rest of the month that I missed the opportunity to record on the blog. For about 2-3 weeks of that month we had very unstable power supply  and then for 2 weeks we didn't have internet connections at all and any reports or emails that were mandatory were sent through tethering with smart phone connections. All of this was quite bearable and not much of an issue to me really. We got our work done and then enjoyed the sun or other activities after work and little did we know that the situation would get tougher. So usually around this time, water supply becomes an issue. One day we woke up, wanted to brush our teeth and found that there wasn't any water. We then decided to get some water from the drinking tank and use that instead, all to find that no water was to be found. All of a sudden I realized how spoiled we are to have water all the time and I thought to myself, all the complaining we've been doing up until this day was kind of dumb. We would complain that there was no electricity and no internet or nothing to do, but I would gladly trade all of that for accessible flowing water. The month was extremely short and in the end  we didn't even realize that a whole month had already passed.

For the next few weeks we have a trek planned out in the Himilayan mountains. We'll be driving a bit higher up in elevation then when the car can't go any further we'll park and take our gear for a 16km hike further up. We'll camp out and then do day hikes from the main campsite. All the interns will be going, the Franks family including 3 kids and the Indian architect from the office. The trek will end on the 11th and then we will start on our intern holiday of traveling and seeing the rest of india. Unfortunately it's the hottest time to be traveling but since we're already here, we decided to man up and take the heat, literally. For the most part, we were able to find a/c train rides but there was one where we could not avoid and that will be going from the Taj Mahal, Agra to Delhi at 2:30pm which is the hottest time of the day. I'm not particularly looking forward to that train ride but I figured it'll be a great experience nonetheless.

Looking forward to seeing you all again soon! Hope you are doing well.

- Jay