Cheela

Late in the evening we arrived in Phalodi, where Satish picked us up super reliably. He then drove us to his village, Cheela, where we stayed for three nights. At first we thought, “Oh wow, where have we landed?” (see the first photos after the nice ones), but it turned out to be a really lovely few days with a genuinely kind family. We visited several villages, saw beautiful dunes in the desert, were shown traditional clothing, and had lots of amazing food (for me, always too spicy).

While Alana got henna on the first day, I had a long chat on the roof with Abishek, Satish’s 22-year-old cousin. Over the days we talked a lot, and I heard many critical opinions from him: “India has a big racism problem,” “Out here in the countryside, the government in Delhi doesn’t care about us,” “Modi is a bad president,” “If you’re born in a village, you die in a village because you have no chance to study at a good university – that’s reserved for people with connections,” “If we had a different government, we’d probably be friends with Pakistan. A few weeks ago we saw rockets coming from Pakistan.”

Alongside all the criticism, we also had so many wonderful experiences with everyone here. When we left, it was clear they didn’t really want us to go 🥲Read more