Better than (Bhutanese?) rice

Kencho is visiting Delhi!! (For those of you who don't know: Kencho was my host sister and translator in Bhutan.) I haven't seen her since I left Bhutan a year ago, so it's been really fun to hang out with her again.

Kencho works for the Rajasthan-based NGO Barefoot College now, and her job is to recruit Bhutanese village women--most of whom had never even been to Thimphu, Bhutan's capital and only real town--to come to India for some sort of training (I think small women's business groups or something). So far she has led one team of 34 women, and she is going to bring another group over in early October. They will spend 3 days in Delhi and then head to Barefoot's main campus in Rajasthan. She also makes trips to Delhi without the groups to meet with Barefoot, so hopefully I'll be seeing her somewhat regularly!

She told me some kind of funny, yet sort of sad, stories about these women's visit to India. Everything we take for granted was completely new and terrifying to them. They had never been in an airplane before, and when the plane took off, the women started shrieking and crying out of fear. In Delhi they stayed at the Oberoi, one of the fanciest hotels in India (no NGO would have wasted funds on this; the Indian government paid for it). The women had never seen a Western toilet before. They stood on the toilet seat and squatted, and then couldn't figure out how to flush it. They complained to Kencho that no bucket was provided (they usually throw water down their holes to "flush"). They had never seen a showerhead either and could not figure out how to bathe. They couldn't operate the elevators and kept locking themselves out because they didn't understand the card key. At the super-fancy hotel restaurant, they ate with their hands because they did not know how to use the silverware. Furthermore, Delhi's pollution was too much for women used to pure mountain air, and many of them got sick (I can't really blame them. I can actually feel the particulate matter coating the back of my throat and am on the hunt for a carbon-filter/pollution mask). Not to mention how shocking the sheer numbers of people and vehicles must have been--they come from villages of about 20 households and no roads, and Thimphu doesn't even have enough traffic for a traffic light. Delhi must have been a completely alien world, like landing on another planet, for these village women.

On a related note, I gave Kencho some new Americanish experiences these past few days. Two nights ago we went to Cocoberry, a trendy frozen yogurt place like Pinkberry, Fraiche, Red Mango, etc popping up all over the US, in Defence Colony. Kencho had never eaten frozen yogurt before! She couldn't really grasp that it wasn't the same as ice cream, and she had never seen a machine dispense "ice cream" that way before. The concept of toppings was totally confusing to her (and the whole point of these places is the toppings). She was a bit overwhelmed and just ended up ordering the same thing as me. The Cocoberry employees were pretty amused by her awe.

Kencho enjoying her first cup of frozen yogurt


Post-yogurt smiles

Tonight we were walking down Janpath in Connaught Place (CP) when we passed a Pizza Hut. We were actually in search of a Tibetan restaurant, but I casually asked Kencho if she liked pizza. To my surprise, she responded that she had never eaten pizza before!! I then realized that Bhutan doesn't have pizza, but I guess I had assumed she would have had pizza at some point in her life, maybe when she was abroad in India (she went to college in Chandigarh), Nepal (worked for an NGO there), or Thailand (free ticket on Druk Air from her flight attendant brother). So we changed our plans from Tibetan to Pizza Hut. The girl needed to try pizza!

Pizza Hut was more overwhelming than Cocoberry. If you thought choosing frozen yogurt toppings were difficult, imagine trying to choose pizza toppings! Especially when you add Indian choices like paneer tikka and masala pepperoni (yes, there are quite a few Indian varieties of pizza). As intrigued as I was by the paneer tikka pizza, I decided it would be best to start her off with the basics and ordered a cheese pizza. After her first bite, she exclaimed, "Oh my God! This is better than RICE!!" I immediately burst into laughter so loud that the entire restaurant turned around to stare at us. It was amazing. Plus our waiter Ajay was awesome. He was hilarious and had a lot of fun introducing Kencho to pizza.

Kencho's first-ever bite of pizza!

Kencho is too into her pizza to look at the camera. Seriously, I couldn't get her to pay attention.

When we came back from CP, I met the Bhutanese couple Kencho is staying with (by coincidence Kencho and I are on the same street, within a 5-minute walk of each other. In a city of 16 million people. Amazing). Kencho is staying with Karma's sister (Karma is Kencho's cousin and the mother of Meto, Jigme, and Yueden). I told her that I stayed in her family's house in Gangzur, and she laughed that she knew all about it. She and her husband have lived in Delhi for 6 years and offered to help me out if I ever needed anything, because, in their words, I'm like extended family. I love Bhutanese people.

I will probably see Kencho again tomorrow, and I can't wait to introduce her to something else new! I wonder what it will be...

In other news, the apartment hunt continues, thus far unsuccessfully. For now I am crashing at a fellow TERI foreigner's apartment. And I will post about work later.

(PS: As you may have noticed in these pictures, I have reverted to putting my hair up everyday. It's just way too hot and humid to wear it down.)