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Aurangabad, The (Polish) Amazing Race, and Mom Leaves: Apr 14 to Apr 22

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On the 14 th , my mom and I started the day early with a tour of the Ellora caves. These are a series of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves carved out of the volcanic basalt between the 6 th and 10 th centuries. Our tour guide was a man in his 20’s named Sanjay. I was a little skeptical of hiring a guide for the cave tour, unsure that it would add much to the experience, but I was greatly mistaken—Sanjay was great and our visit to the caves would not have been nearly as interesting without him. The caves are unimaginably huge, carved out of the basalt hillside by the hands of thousands of workers with chisel and hammer. These workers included chiselers who took large sections of rock out, detailers, painters, rock carriers (rock had to be hauled out of the caves in buckets), tool sharpeners, and others needed to keep the work camp running (managers, cooks, etc.). The making of each cave must have been quite an operation. My favorite of the caves was a Buddhist cave specially desig...
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Attaya: A Senegalese Tea Tradition

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Throughout my time in Senegal, across many regions and languages, the most unifying cultural force I have observed is attaya, Senegalese tea. My CBT family (local host family in Mbour) makes attaya once a day. My host dad in Kedougou makes it twice a day. Other families I have spent time with fall somewhere in between. Each puts their individual spin on it, but the process is generally pretty consistent. I will describe below how attaya is often made in my village, but small variations do occur among families. Attaya is made with a 100 CFA packet of green tea imported from China. These packets are sold in every boutique in Senegal. Even my village, which does not have a boutique, has multiple people who sell tea out of their homes. Conveniently, the same places that sell tea also sell 100 CFA bags of sugar; one bag is the amount of sugar needed to make attaya. Attaya is made in three rounds, so each person gets three small glasses of tea. In each round, more sugar is added to ...
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Peace Corps Senegal

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Hello Travels with Tavish Readers! I am writing this post as I take a break from packing for Senegal!  I am joining the Peace Corps in Senegal as a Forestry and Environment Change Agent. For two years, I will be living with a host family and working with farmers to help implement sustainable practices on their farms. Many of my projects will be focused on tree planting. I depart for my Peace Corps staging event in Philadelphia on Friday, September 21, then my cohort will fly to Senegal together on Sunday, September 23. We will train for 10 weeks at the Peace Corps Training Center in Thies before moving to our respective communities. Due to limited internet access during service, my posts on this blog will likely be infrequent. You can subscribe to the blog to get an email update whenever a new post is made. After you click the "Subscribe" button and complete the Captcha, you will get an email from Feed Burner to verify your subscription to t...
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