Goodbye little sisters

My research assistant and I left Dungarpur together for the last time yesterday. I will return later this year, but she is off to London in a few months for a Master's program in development studies. We had an amazing last day filled with realizations of all the friends we have made on our weeks and weeks of staying there. The guys that own the restaurant we love, the guys at the hotel that were once so grumpy and recently had become so kind, all of the amazing people we have met in villages, the countless cups of chai we were given. And our close friends: P.lal our driver, guide, guard and friend and Madhu our friend, fellow researcher, and slumber party hostess. P.lal told us that he planned to hang a photo of us in his house to remind him of all of these weeks we spent together and all of the fantastic adventures we had. He told us that he wanted to do this because we had become not only his friends but also his little sisters. We promised to work on our Hindi and English, respectively, and to meet again in October.

I could not help but remember how I felt the first time I arrived in Dungarpur, months and months ago, so bewildered and uncertain. I knew next to nothing about the place. Now I recognize the roads, see people I have met in the streets, have grown very fond of the landscape and people, and know an awful lot about seasonal migration and cotton seed production. I am excited to write about everything I have seen and heard. I am also glad that that was not my last trip. I still have lots of questions and a strong urge to spend more time there and understand more about the social, agricultural and economic changes taking place in the area.