Delhi

Finished up a transcription and started another. I started with the easy ones, and now have only the very quick-talking Sonam Jorgyes’s interview to transcribe. Finally got in touch with a professor at Roorkee who can fix me up at the hostel, and he has done it for me. So nice of him! I also have an interview set up with him later tomorrow, so I hope my travel plans go OK. I don’t have any money left on my phone now, and I don’t know when I can get it refilled. Schnikes! Got in touch with LBSNAA, after tracking Kalpana Dube down in Delhi, and finally getting in touch with someone at the academy, after being hung up on countless times. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Maybe speaking English is my problem. Anyway, I feel like my plans for the next week and a half are at least shored up, and that’s a relief, though I still have to get through the actual travel part of it tomorrow. I hope I have something to read on the bus. There are a few reports that Jenny got for me that I still haven’t a chance to look at, and they’re in my bag. So maybe I can do that, if I don’t get carsick from reading. I feel I’m again going to be last one on the bus, with my giant backpack, which means I’ll be at the back again.

I just feel like a lot of this project is going to be more drab, without Sarah or Alex or Jenny to return to in the evenings after I’m done. I will have to keep being “on” all night, meeting all the new people in the hostels. Which is OK, really, I’ll appreciate the experience and getting to meet so many people, but it leaves me little time to recharge my introvert nature.

I think it was today that I spoke with Dr. Eaton, who was very encouraging, but I still feel I’m accomplishing nothing (hence, I’m still keeping this journal up). Even as I transcribe these interviews, I feel I “did them wrong,” and there are so many points in the interview I want to shake myself and ask “Why didn’t you say or ask this??” So frustrating to myself. Still, when I talked to Dr. Eaton, I probably sounded positive because I had gotten three very friendly interviews recorded, and a number of others achieved, though in written form. But I still wonder: how much useful information am I really getting?