October 21-29, 2005: URSI GA, New Delhi, India

This year's General Assembly for the International Radio Science Union (URSI) was at the Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi, India. I was awarded a Young Scientist scholarship by URSI to come and give poster and a presentation at the conference. I spent about half my time there at the assembly, where Dan and I interested a lot of people in our research. There were a lot of great talks, and I got very excited about doing some new things. On the 25th the 144 Young Scientists from around the world met for a banquet at Sirifort. My fears of bigwigs giving speeches turned out to be unfounded, and I had a wonderful time meeting lots of people. On the 27th, the 144 of us were invited to have tea with the president of India, Abdul Kalam, and I had the priviledge of shaking his hand. The other half of my time I spend sightseeing (of course). On the 26th I went to Agra, which is located about 200 km south of Delhi. Dan, Mary-Kate, Will, and I shared a taxi there driven by Ajit Sikh. We saw the legendary Taj Mahal, which was indeed beautiful, but heavily touristed, and then made our way to Agra Fort, which was a castle held by the Islamic Moghuls in the 1700's, but is now held by monkeys (see the photos). On our way back to Delhi, we stopped at Sikri--an old, abandoned, red stone city. We arrived around sunset, and I took lots of pictures. The rest of the drive back constitutes the most acute period of abject terror I have experienced outside of rafting; India traffic, at night, on a barely paved, two-lane road, subdivided into 3 or 4 or 5 lanes by drivers of vehicles ranging from bikes to camels to tractors to semis, some with ultra-bright high beams that blind you, some without lights at all, passing each other in your lane, and cutting it REALLY close, was enough to keep me white-knucked for the entire 4 hour drive home. On the 28th, I was joined by John Bunton (Australia), Richard Lord (South Africa), to take Ajit's taxi to Jaipur. Jaipur is much less heavily touristed than Agra, and we had an excellent opportunity to do some shopping in a market where we were the only caucasians. After first circling the city by car, we hopped out and took a stroll around. We the visited the palace of the Maharaja in town (containing museums of textiles, printing, and weaponry), and then an old ruined fort atop one of the hills surrounding Jaipur. To get to the fort, Richard and I took an elephant. The fort was structurally intact, but completely abandoned, so we just wove around until we were thoroughly lost. It was awesome. All of India was buzzing with preparations for Diwali--a Hindu holiday commemorating the triumph of good over evil. The story goes that Rama, a vessel (avatar) of Vishnu (one of the 3 primary gods: Bhrama the creator, Vishnu the caretaker, and Shiva the destroyer), was destined to be the benevolent ruler of India. However, his stepmother conspired to have her own sons rule. To avoid conflict, Rama resigned his right to the throne and left town. The evil demon Ravana, a Bhramin who tricked Shiva into granting him demigod powers, took this opportunity to spirit away Rama's wife to Sri Lanka. Rama then led a crucade to Sri Lanka at the head of an army to rescue her. He was ultimately successful, and upon his return to Delhi, his stepmother, his half-brothers, and everyone else realized that he was the rightful leader and celebrated his ascent to the throne. Diwali means literally "festival of lights", and is celebrated like a mix of Christmas and the 4th of July. On the 29th, quite exhausted, I decided to take it easy by going to the National Museum of India. I was accompanied by Girish of the Raman Institute in Bangalore, and he helped straighten me out on a lot of Hindu mythology. The museum contained a lot of artifacts from the Indus Valley dating from the birth of civilization around 3000 B.C. These were by far the oldest artifacts I've ever seen. With Girish's help, I learned a lot about the history of the country. After the museum, I decided to walk back to the hotel. On the way, I came across a polo match, so I stopped in to watch the second half of a game I knew nothing about. It turns out that polo is quite straight-forward: 5 people on each team ride around and try to knock a ball into a goal with a mallet. The great part is watching the horsemanship as the players maneuver all over the field. Anyway, it was a fantastic trip. India is a zoo. People are all over the road on bikes, in cars, walking, driving oxen, honking and weaving, and creating utter chaos. Yet somehow, relatively few accidents seem to occur, and people help each other out. Everyone I met (panhandlers aside) was warm and welcoming. I realize how lucky I am to have had this opportunity, but that's why I got into astronomy in the first place. The only downside was that Sarah couldn't come--I was excited to go home by the end.