Blog # 5
This weekend was great. We got to
go see some of the best sites that Southern India has to offer. All five of us went
together and we went to Kanyakumari first. We took a sleeper train down there
Friday morning, stayed two nights and got to see some really great stuff. I
know that the office wants our Mid Semester retreats to be an escape from our
projects but since I am interested in alternative forms of medicine I was
constantly on the look out for healers and different places where people could receive
medical care in the city. Kanyakumari was beautiful in one aspect but as far as
Indian cities go, it was also lacking a lot. The city is more of a tourist destination
than anything and the infrastructure and systems are sorely outdated. The
general hospital is small and outdated. In order to receive any substantial
medical care you would need to be transported all the way to Trivandrum in the
next state over almost 90 km away to get decent attention.
We also were able to stay in a
really nice hotel on the top floor for the equivalent of around 3 us dollars
per person. The views were immaculate and the sunsets and sunrises, which are
what Kanyakumari is known for, were breathtaking. We left the next night for Rameswaram
the next night on another sleeper train that went through the night saving us
more money on hotels.
When we arrived at 5 am in Rameswaram
the city was already buzzing. There were people everywhere and we went pretty
much unnoticed. We ended up next to the section of the Rameswaram bay that is
considered holy water and were very entertained by the religious washing
practices of the people there. It was interesting to see. The men strip down
into either a Lungi or their underwear and women go in wearing a full saree.
They go under several times using buckets to dump the holy water on their heads
with their hands and or plastic containers that the poor sell on your way to
the water.
After that ceremony is done you
walk sopping wet to the temple in the middle of the city, which is beautiful
and you go through a 22 step process of ceremonial washings to cleanse you of
any bad or evil spirits. This belief is derived from a long held cultural
belief in the significant events that took place in Hindu and Indian history on
the island of Rameswaram.
We spent the rest of the first
day on the beach at Dhanushkodi, which is the point of the island closest to
Sri Lanka. I was also to contact some medical providers and I had the rickshaw
driver tell me stories about medicine during all of the driving we did that day
to get down to the beach. I was able to visit and look around some of the
medical facilities in Rameswaram and it was an interesting contrast to the city
hospitals that I always visit here.
We took another train from
Rameswaram the night after we got there and went straight to Madurai. We all
had tickets to leave Madurai the next morning but I had to come back early so I
went ahead and booked a ticket that took me straight through to Coimbatore. It
was pretty expensive because there were no more sleeper car spots so I paid 8
US dollars to get an AC sleeper car that was super nice and worth every penny
of it. I made it home yesterday morning and went straight back to the hospital
to continue my rounds.
The research is going well and I
even made plans yesterday to take a trip to Kochi next weekend to tour the
major General Hospital there with one of the head doctors who I ran into at
Ortho One here. I will be doing that for two days next week and the gentleman
has offered to put me up. I will find out more when he emails me back but he is
expecting me next Thursday at the hospital.
Well I am still ling here in my hammock and I couldn’t be hungrier. The
group all just got back and I am going to head in to the city to meet up with
Steven and the girls for lunch after Steven gets done with shadowing
doctors/dentist in the city. Things are going great and we are all nice and
relaxed ready to blow this research out of the water in the last couple of
weeks that we have here.
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