Juniata College India Marine Science

All that's left now is the conclusion. In just a few days, I'll be making my triumphant homecoming. I can taste those cheeseburgers covered in ketchup and mayonnaise now. The only India left around me back home will be the pictures and the memories. And this is how I will remember India.

I'll remember India being like a big barn yard. There were animals everywhere. Pig's ass, cow's ass, and horse's ass, too. When you walk down the streets of Pondicherry, you'll pass clothing stores, restaurants, dodge a speeding rickshaw, notice some of the tall buildings, you know, a typical city like atmosphere. Then, in front of you, a cow looks both ways then crosses the street. He's going to join his friends on the other side who are munching on God-knows-what in the open sewers.

Goats! Flippin' goats are EVERYWHERE! Goats in the trees, goats on the temples, goats even in your underwear looking for your udder. We were driving back from some NGO near the Gulf of Mannar and I spotted two goats walking out of someone's house. A house, come on! Flippin' everywhere.

Besides the barnyard animals, there were tons of other creatures that might give some people the he-be-ge-bies. The bathrooms at FERAL are like a reptile and amphibian petting zoo. Take your pick at which kind of critter you would like to pick up: there's a wide variety of geckos, frogs, toads, and even the occasional snake.

I'll remember all those train rides that we took across India. Some of the best sleep that I got in India came from those over-nighters on the train. The rhythmic music of the clack-ity-clack on the tracks marched me to sleep.

And there's lots of people on those trains to meet, too. That noisy little brat of a girl who spit her candy out on my clean, white Reboks. Honestly, she would take a bite of candy and spit it onto my shoes. If her mother hadn't been there I'd have slapped her, or at least grabbed that stupid candy off of her.

And those guys selling chi and coffee. All of them would sound the same when they would yell “chi” or “coffee.” Their voice sounded somewhere between the way your voice would sound if you smoked three packs and day and gargled with Drain-o.

I'll remember all those salt pans. That salt from the ocean would get piled so high, it looked like snow piles someone would climb up to play King of the Hill. Both are shinny little crystals, except the one's in India have a little more sodium and chloride in them. After time and when the water would evaporate from the pans, they looked like sheets of ice. When you would stand next to a salt pan, you'd swear you were in a winter wonderland if it wasn't for the heat beating down on you. My God, the heat!

How could anyone forget the heat. I can never remember a time being soaked in sweat by 7 in the morning. Unreal. And to think, its only going to get hotter here in May. Glad, I won't be here for that.

I'll remember snorkeling and SCUBA diving. The Andamans were beautiful both above and below the water. That's where this whole Indiana Jones adventure took off.

The food. I'll try and forget the food, but I'm sure I'll be haunted by white rice and curry for the rest of my life. But I loved those dosas soaked in coconut chutney. I'd come back to India just for them, and probably Goa.

I'll remember Rauf, Ashra, Ravi and Anu and their kids, Chitra, Sumathi, Kalu, Mutsky, Runt, Cynthia and Brian, Dr. Parthas, Dr. Katti, KashewNut, Dhillon and Irene, those hot Euro babes, the singing Russian, Tanya from Moscow, the German couple, that Bora Bora dude with the shaved head, Samir, Paula Martin, Dilip, Raji, Ganesh, Shandru, Shreeny and his wife that little girl on the train, that poop-rat of a crustacean teacher in Porto Nova, Lou Reed, Walt Disney, Neil Pelkey, sweetie Ipshi and her husband Baba who I wrote the best Lomborg paper he ever read, Genna, Laura, Josh, Cait, Tom, Brosi, and of course Tanvi G.

And that's how I'll remember India. That's all I have to say about that.

Zak Kupchinsky

Walking through that airport terminal in the Chennai Airport at 3 am was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. For as long as I live, I will never forget my first glimpse of India. After we picked up our bags, and thank God they all made it from the states, we headed together towards the exit, towards another world. Women were lined up, hanging over the gates, all different ages, all dressed in different sarees. Each color of the spectrum was represented on those sarees, each hue, each pattern, all bright and extravagant. This image has been burned into my memory forever. 50 years from now, if I’m still kickin’, should I get a wiff of curry or bite into a red, hot pepper, this is the image that will flash pass my eyes. All of them were smiling, waiting in anticipation for whomever they were waiting for. There was a haze lingering over their heads, which made it even more dream like. I went deaf for the 3 minutes it took to pass though to the outside. My brain had switched off my hearing because of the sensory overload my eyes were desperately trying to digest. Culture shock in its purest form. For all the sleep that I had been deprived within the last week, I was wide-awake.

The next morning when I woke up after a restless first night, I gazed out the window and took in my first view of daytime in India. When we got in, late the night before, the streets were lifeless but now definitely had a pulse. It was reassuring to look out and see all the people going about their daily business. Young and old, poor and poorer, lungies and sarees functioning, doing what they needed to do. I was worried that I might not make it in this different world. But then I thought, if these people could live their whole life here, roughing it through the heat, the hunger, the poverty, I better be able to rough it for 3 and ½ months.

A knock came at the door only 5 and ½ hours into the New Year. I opened and greeted Neil Pelkey with Happy New Year! He was very obviously still jet lagged and not in the highest New Year Spirits quite yet, he had only come to wake us up because it was time. Time to start the adventure.

More baggage checking, more flying around the earth, more very new, very different places to go. It was a two hour flight between Chennai and to one of the most exotic places found in the universe...the Andaman Islands. Once we arrived we had a 3 hour boat ride to Havlock Island.

After docking the boat, the journey continued, this time by Jeep. 20 minutes later we finished at Cafe Del Mar. Here's where we first met Rauf The way I will always remember Rauf is with his usual attire and accessories: a green Polo Shirt, khaki shorts, blue sandals, dark aviators, and a hand holding a glass of alcohol. And the first time I saw him, I was tempted to raise a flag on him because his physique was similar to a flag pole. “Pelkey, put the girls in these huts, they have camel spiders in them,” were his first words, followed by his deep, dopey laugh. This would only be the beginning of his antics for the rest of the trip.

The huts. The huts! In all the worrying I did about India before getting here, I had completely forgot that I would be sleeping 3/4's of my nights in huts! 3 nights ago I was fast asleep in my nice cozy bed back home, two nights ago I had a pleasurable overnight in some fancy hotel in London, even last night in Chennai the bed was soft and there were 4 concrete walls surrounding me, with a ceiling and a floor. These huts were something out of Swiss Family Robinson, made of sticks and leaves. Another burst of culture shock.

My hut was small. Just enough room for a mattress, mosquito netting, and me. I felt a little claustrophobic at first, but then eventually fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the first night to go to the bathroom. As I put on my shoes to walk to the toilets, I heard a blood curdling cry. Some kind of animal was in serious pain. Yelping, crying, agonizing pain. Man, where the hell am I? Is this the Island of Dr. Moreau? I decided that I didn't have to go to the bathroom that bad and stayed in my hut. I decided that the geckos and camel spiders inside my hut weren't as fierce and brutal as the things in the darkness of the night.

We were at the Andamn Islands for the reefs. After the major tsunami a few years back, there has been concern for the rebuilding and regenerating of the reefs. Our group and the groups of the past and future perform/ed underwater transects of the reefs to monitor the growth and rebuilding nature of the reef. Everyone was required to be SCUBA certified.

SCUBA diving is an adventure in itself. You gotta have your stuff together when you're below the water. Its really relaxing and enjoyable, but you need your wits about you at all times. If the 20 meters of water above you isn't dangerous enough, the creatures you encounter in their home adds a little more excitement to the adventure.

On one transect, we were near the reef slope over some stag horn corals. I was helping Cait take pictures with that damn underwater camera that would never work. After she would snap the pictures, I would have to move the square quadrat. As I went to grab the quadrat, a sea krait (an extremely venomous sea snake), with black and blue bands swam right by my mask. “If you get bit by a sea krait...bye-bye,” I could recall Neil warning us about them. Frozen in the warm tropical water, I watched a meter and a half of those black and blue bands swim away.

I also encountered a lion fish. Pterois volitans is the scientific name, doesn't it just sound pretty? When I used to travel and snorkel around the world with my mom, I used to think parrot fish were the coolest and prettiest fish in the sea, but now my new love is with the lion fish. They are so elegant with their long, flashy rays pointing out in every direction. Although the rays were beautiful, they are also deadly. Get to close to one's home and they'll zap you with those toxic rays. I would find them along the reef at Cafe Del Mar during snorkeling trips in the morning. I'd watch them swim, they'd watch me snorkel. I like to stare them right in the eyes...its like staring death right in the eyes.

While in the Andamans we also checked out, Beach No. 7. Its ranked 7th most beautiful beach in the world and its ranked number 1 in Asia. It stretched forever. Meters and meter of blue water, hot sand, and pure beauty. It's one of those things that you can't appreciate with a camera or words. You just have to see this place before you die.

Those 12 or so days in the Andamans were probably the hardest days of the trip. But that's OK, Jerry Garcia says “the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore.” For just being a beginner at SCUBA diving, doing the transects in tough currents was hard work. I remember finishing the transects and saying to myself that I had easier days at the factory that I worked at this past summer. I love working hard and have complete respect for anyone that busts their plums to get the job done. So combined hard physical labor with the marine environment made for a fun trip to the Andamans.

It was also the first 12 days with the group of people I would be spending time with for the next 3 months. I didn't really know anybody that well in the group, but after a few nights with some cold brews, I was excited to be in their company. Everyone seem excited about the rest of th trip. We started to gel there within those first two weeks and now with only two more weeks left, I can happily say that we are still a tight bunch of kids.

Zak Kupchinsky