Apologies if posting hasn't been very frequent. I just spent the week in the Varanasi attending the 18th Himalayan Languages Symposium which was hosted by Banaras Hindu University.
And here are some obligatory shots of the Ganges.
And more photos from the obligatory boat ride on the Ganges.
Popping over to Varanasi from Assam presented a mild cultural shock to me. While in Assam, I can usually go about my day-to-day activities generally unnoticed (people do look at me, but they just assume I'm from somewhere in NE India like Nagaland), the instant I arrived in Varanasi, I was instantly given the 'foreigner treatment'. Everywhere I went, people would say, "Hello!" or "How are you?" or "Where are you from?" as I walked past them, and I'd get touts and beggars coming up to me.
The other thing I had to get used to, was that when I'm in Assam and show any trouble understanding Assamese, almost everyone immediately swaps to Hindi, which other people from India are more likely to understand, but which I have even more difficulty understanding because I've had more exposure to Assamese. It's similar to how Sumi speakers often switch to Nagamese when I look like I'm having trouble, even though I understand more Sumi than Nagamese. Of course, in Varanasi, people usually just spoke to me in English from the outset (if they could), since they assumed that as a foreigner I would know English.
Now, if I was actually from NE India, this sort of treatment would be supremely annoying and probably insulting, being treated -and charged prices- like a foreigner in my own country. It's no wonder everyone here calls the rest of India 'the mainland'.
And here are some obligatory shots of the Ganges.
And more photos from the obligatory boat ride on the Ganges.
Popping over to Varanasi from Assam presented a mild cultural shock to me. While in Assam, I can usually go about my day-to-day activities generally unnoticed (people do look at me, but they just assume I'm from somewhere in NE India like Nagaland), the instant I arrived in Varanasi, I was instantly given the 'foreigner treatment'. Everywhere I went, people would say, "Hello!" or "How are you?" or "Where are you from?" as I walked past them, and I'd get touts and beggars coming up to me.
The other thing I had to get used to, was that when I'm in Assam and show any trouble understanding Assamese, almost everyone immediately swaps to Hindi, which other people from India are more likely to understand, but which I have even more difficulty understanding because I've had more exposure to Assamese. It's similar to how Sumi speakers often switch to Nagamese when I look like I'm having trouble, even though I understand more Sumi than Nagamese. Of course, in Varanasi, people usually just spoke to me in English from the outset (if they could), since they assumed that as a foreigner I would know English.
Now, if I was actually from NE India, this sort of treatment would be supremely annoying and probably insulting, being treated -and charged prices- like a foreigner in my own country. It's no wonder everyone here calls the rest of India 'the mainland'.
