From Alaska to India

Locals often claim that Kaktovik is the foggiest place on earth. In the little room that serves as an office for the local airline, some witty fellow has scratched "Barter Island" off the map on the wall and replaced it with "Foggy Island". I believe it. For 5 days the coast was gray and totally socked in, with visibility less than a couple hundred meters; not good conditions to land a small plane on a gravel spit runway. So I fretted in the bunkhouse, getting ever more irritable as my window for reaching India on time narrowed (check out the foggy bunkhouse in the picture). The fog finally cleared on Friday, and when I reached Fairbanks, US Airways told me that if I wanted to get back to Virginia without spending $1400, then I would have to wait until Monday.

So no orientation for me. However I did get to spend an extra couple of days with my parents in Virginia. I finally got to New Delhi on Wednesday night, a full 8 days after my originally scheduled arrival time. After a few days engaged in paperwork and a mini-orientation, I jumped on a plane up to Dehra Dun, the capital of Uttarrakhand state. From there a taxi took me up, up, up into a cloud, to the town of Mussourie, a British-Raj era hill station, where I will be studying Hindi at the Landour Language School for the next three months. After 2 days here, I've concluded that Mussourie is perpetually encased in a cloud. Walking through the busy town center, the blare of horns and chatter of honeymooning couples is muffled by the dense fog hanging between the buildings. Occasionally there's an opening in the white bank, and glorious views down the hillsides are visible. Dense trees cover the slopes, and gray languor monkeys and a whole variety of unidentified birds fill the branches. Rhesus macaques sit on walls along the roads, staring balefully at passersby, hoping to spy some food to snatch. I'll upload some photos as soon as I take some! Classes start tomorrow!