sick week 4:13 AM

so as many of you know, this last week i was admitted to the hospital on monday, due to a high fever. what first seemed like a similar case of dengue fever took three days to actually find out that it was just a viral fever. Dengue fever is a viral fever just a more extreme case than what i had. a viral fever is usually transmitted through mosquito bites. so once again carter green gets bit by a mosquito and he's down for a week: malaria in Togo, and now in India. some people might be wondering how many tropical diseases i am wanting. well i think i have learned my lesson that mosquitos mean more than just an annoying little scratchy red circle, they cause sicknesses elsewhere besides alaska.
i was admitted to the hospital and stayed there for a week trying to get my fever down, and trying to get my white blood cell count up. it took a week for these two things to happen, a week of sitting in hospital, not enjoying the foods or smell. the one good thing about the hospital were the nurses. they were all very nice and helpful and kept telling me to keep smiling. finally on saturday i was able to get dismissed. i came home to a wonderful site of my bed and kitchen. i fell asleep for over 12 hours and when i awoke sunday morning i made peanut butter pancakes and was able to relax all day long. today is my last day on leave, i think, so i thought i would blog about this sickness so that it is never forgotten. i think that getting sick in the third world is quite the experience.

you learn a lot about yourself but also about how other countries treat sick people. i think its fascinating, not so much that i would do it all again, but enough to not get too bummed while i am sick. i mean how many times can you say, "when i was sick in india..."

It's Back 4:15 AM

and for those of you who are part of the green way following you might have noticed something growing on my upper lip. Thats right it's back:

the motivation: all of the indian people here have mustaches. so i thought to become more like them i need to do my best to look like them. the employees at work like my mustache a lot and like the fact that i'm trying to be more like them. i eat the food, i take autos everywhere and now i wear a mustache. im doing pretty good so far. i know i was only clean shaven for four months but i think the mustache being inspired by the indian local people is a noble cause!

Trekking in Nandi Hills 3:06 AM

So as you've been noticing we spend almost every weekend trying to get out of the city to enjoy the indian land. right outside of Bangalore located approx. 65km or so out of the city there is the start of the Eastern Gats mountain range. now they arent anything huge but in india a mountain is amazing and considered a holy place. with hindu temples all over them its always a good trip to make. so we decided on saturday that we would go to Nandi Hills, the closest part of the eastern gats to bangalore:

they werent far but they were amazing:

we rented a car for the whole day to drive us there and back and wherever inbetween. when we arrived at the town of Nandi i could see the moutains and all i wanted to do was get to the top of them. but it seemed we took a very round a bout to get to a hiking spot. in fact we took this winding mountain rode that took us to the backside of the mountains where we even saw more mountains:

it was a beautiful road and i was thinking the whole time in my head how much i wanted to have my road bike with me. i'm really missing my bike here in india. we followed this road for quite awhile and made it up to the top of one of the mountains. up there we had to pay for parking to visit the temples and such. i really wanted to go hiking but i guess this little area had to do for today:

it was pretty fun. it was more of a tourist location than any hiking though. i started to go over to look at a big cliff and there were about 3-5 indians running after me telling me that it was too dangerous. they didnt stop other indians just the white man trying to have a little fun. i went down anyways and sat on the cliff. they said that it was about 4,500 feet tall:

the view was amazing:

the we went over to an area that they called suicide point where guards use to push people off to kill them. it was the same cliff just a more structured looking platform that place was also very cool. it was from this platform that we saw a moutain in the distance that we could see a large trail on. we took it as a jeep trail and decided to take our car there to go hiking. when we got there we had to convince our driver to just wait for us while we went and did some trekking. he thought we were crazy he warned us of cobras and tigers but we werent too scared. if the jeeps take this trail then so could we. plus me being myself i had my small little 4-inch knife that i used as my security blanket. i figured i could tie it to a stick and use it as a spear if it comes down to survival mode! so we took off:

we saw monkeys and more monkeys but not tigers or snakes. the trail was actually quite nice and was a jeep trail for the first 100m then it sort of tapered off into a single track trail. mountain biking would have been fun but we were just hiking. when we got to the top we could see behind us, where we were:

and then we could see what was in front of us:

and it was beautiful. i loved it up there. it was breezy so not too hot, and beautiful. we must have sat up there for 1.5 hours maybe 2 before we wanted to go back. it was amazing. nobody else was up there i loved it:

when we did get back to the car. our driver was just hanging out with some coconut selling mamas under the trees. so we stopped and got some coconut milk and headed back home. on our way home we got a good picture of where we had been:

the cliffs were huge and we had heard rumors that Nandi Hills was a popular hangout for paragliders and mountainbikers but we didnt see any. But it was a successful trekking day and i loved it. we got a little sun which was a change from the office all day long. When we did finally come home I bought some paneer tikka masala with rice to fill me up and then we did some late night swimming which is becoming a trend of this last week. we must have went 4 times or so. we love it and it is totally empty by then. so yep another successful day in India.

Sam's Wedding 10:44 AM

This is Sam, a former single adult, he is now a married man married happily to Pradhika. both a members and both work at Infosys which is a large IT company in india. This marriage was not an arranged marriage but is, what the indians call, a love marriage. a love marriage is what americans know as a marriage. interestingly enough both families were ok with this love marriage which is rare. we got a wedding invitation but weren't able to make the wedding due to work, so we went to the reception:

This reception was loud and the singers and music and announcer were a little annoying. i can see now a greater appreciation for all my sisters wedding receptions. i didnt like them then but compared to this one it was a blast. but there were some good dancers here:

One thing that was really cool was we were able to go to the bachleor party that was the night before the marriage. after fhe on tuesday night we got a sleep over invite to sams house. we of course went excited for the food and the experience and it was a really fun time. it gave us more time one on one with more members i made some pretty good friends do to it:

We ended up not staying the night but thats all good. let me tell ya though eating a lot at the bachelor party, then again at the wedding my stomach for teh first time has disagreed with the indian food. My mentor, Jayakumar, at work told me that weddings do that though. so i guess it was just too much to handle but im better now so no worries!

Hyderabad 9:36 AM

Sorry to post the Hyderabad post second but we really didnt see anything in hyderabad until sunday and monday.  it was a great experience though.  we all slept in this one little hotel room that was smaller than my room in Bangalore:

it was pretty good though.  the service wasnt great but you cant expect much.  we stayed at the hotel friday night until monday evening when we flew out.  on Saturday we visited Nagarjuna Konda all day and it was great.  you can read the past post if you want to read about that.  on sunday we were able to track down a branch in hyderabad which was located in a super nice building:

it was quite fun to see the church operate somewhere so far away from home.  it was very fun to mingle with the members for a bit.  that day after church we were able to go to a restaurant that is well known throughout india.  it rained a lot and we had to walk in it a little bit but we made it to the restaurant a little wet:

it was called paradise and it is well known for its Hyderabad Biryani.  and let me tell you it was delicious:

we ate like kings and had a wonderful sunday!  on monday we woke up early to go to museum that was full of all the relics of the muslim kings.  afterwards we went to Charminar.  a famous mosque in Hyderabad:

our professor got pretty sick we think it was from some food he ate but he couldnt stay with us at Charminar.  he said the crowds and lack of clean air made him even more sick.  he left us at the market that surronded Chaminar, while we went shopping amongst the muslim market.  then we went to Golkonda Fort, an old fort used in the olden days for a protection against attacking armies.  it was huge:

it was seriously a great trip.   

Nagarjuna Konda 8:54 AM

So as many of you know we took off last Friday to fly up to Hyderabad to meet our BYU professor up there and spend the weekend there before travelling back to Bangalore together on Monday night.  so we bought our flights on expedia.com and they offered us a touring package to go out to see this buddhist island museum called Nagarjuna Konda.  we jumped on it and little did we know of the experience we would sign ourselves up for.  we left Hyderabad at 8am Saturday morning to embark on a three hour car ride.  luckily we had our own car but it did have five people in it:

but the whole car ride was definately worth it.  we even had a guide that would answer any question that we asked.  imangine that any question!  once we did make it to Nagajuna Sagar we found the docks so that we could get on our boat.  we first loaded onto a boat that was a pretty good size, thank goodness we got a top-level seat:

Hyderabad is much hotter than Bangalore.  in fact when you leave the city you have a higher risk of sun burn due to the little pollution that is outside the city.  it was a great boat ride though, slow but great.  The actual island is an interesting story.  so this lake exists due to a huge dam that was built for energy purposes for all of hyderabad.  when they built the dam they noticed that old ruins started to get uncovered by the absence of the water.  these ruins were really old but they decided to move them out to his island out in the middle of the lake to make an island museum of all these old buddhist artifacts and stupas.  i was only able to get pictures of the outside exhibits but here is a stupa:

Here are the five pillars of life: 

To refrain from taking life (non-violence towards sentient life forms)

To refrain from taking that which is not given (not committing theft)

To refrain from sensual (including sexual) misconduct

To refrain from lying (speaking truth always) 

To refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness (specifically, drugs and alcohol)

and why not a cool statue:

Something that i thought was really cool was this tree that they said was planted by the Dalai Lama himself:

The day was a very very hot day and by the end of the day at the museum most of us were ready to go home.  but driving home we saw this cool bridge that had be taken out by some floods from the dam and it was an amazing site:

the dam was also very beautiful with the sun:

another beautiful day in India