Goodbye Koraput, Hello Beau

The moment finally arrived - the end of my placement and the arrival of Beau to India! I wake up at 4am for the 5-hour drive to Visakhpatnam, where I have about 8 hours to kill before Beau's flight gets in. I go to this fancy salon for an ayurvedic facial and emerge with some kind of skin rash. I'm sweating bullets and hop into this insanely overpriced taxi to the airport, where I scream at the taxi driver for about 30 minutes and try to pay him with torn rupees. Beau's flight is miraculously only 10 nail-biting minutes late and we start making out in public (which I think is a federal crime in India for un-married couples). We arrange for a legit, pre-paid taxi and I learn the price of my ride over actually was right. Oops. The next day we make our way to Koraput on this slow government bus, with people hanging off the top and cows speeding ahead of us.

In Koraput, Beau gets to experience all the interesting and annoying things I've sort of taken for granted, including waking up at 6am for a trip to the field, only to discover that no one is ready to take you there until 4pm. Or the obligatory visits to everyone's home, stuffing you to the brim with bony meat dishes and lukewarm lentils. And the bright green paddy fields that stand out against the deep red dirt. And the pooris for breakfast, which are big puffed up round doughboy-ish things.

My going away party was epic, with jello shots, homemade chicken pakoras, ridiculous dancing and one of the girls from the office getting too drunk (again). When it was finally time to pack before an early wake-up call, we lost all power. In the pitch black, I tried to search around my apartment with a candle deciding whether or keep or toss items like my large rotating dolphin light, girl & dog figurine, tribal saree, dirty baskets, etc. I pretty much got rid of everything except this one frying pan that has been quite annoying to lug around Manali and Dharamsala. More to come on those adventures, stay tuned...