aligarh -- the city that is featured in no guidebook

One laboratory in a urban health center where they test for TB. This was only one of many laboratories that these doctors let us - a group of 21 American college students with no formal medical training - let us traipse through.

Our bathroom at the illustrious guest house in which we were staying. I was afraid to pee most nights.

Signs for condoms. Isn't he cute?

Indian record-keeping system at a primary healthcare facility. The tertiary teaching hospital had a comparable filing system.

ASHAs, or Accredited Social Health Activists, meeting with a local woman and her one-and-a-half month old baby. The role of these ASHAs is to decrease the rates of infant mortality in their rural communities, so they encourage pregnant women to give birth in hospitals to avoid complications, teach the women how to breast feed properly and ensure that the newborn baby is healthy and well-cared for and not underweight. A really cool program that was amazing to see in person.

Cows. And the Mystery Machine.

These are medicines, actually. Prepared by Unani doctors. Unani is a traditional form of medicine that is funded by the central government.

I'm very luck to come from a family that loves to travel, but there's a common reaction I get when I tell my peers that I went to some really awesome city - like London or Seoul - with my family. It's always an, "Ohhhh," marked with a distinct hint of understanding, a touch of sympathy and a smattering of apology. In that one syllable, which sometimes gets drawn out to three or four, there is an implied, "Sorry you had to travel with your family. That sucks because you definitely didn't get to do what you wanted to do, which includes going out on the town after 9PM and hanging out with people our own age."

This is how I feel about this program. It's like I'm traveling with my family. And, as my family can attest, I do not travel well with my family. There is the Yosemite Incident of 2010, in which I yelled at my dad for stopping the car too much to take pictures of wild animals. Most recently is the South Korean Panic Attack of 2011, in which I broke down on a tour bus somewhere between a Buddhist temple and a seaside park. Traveling with this program reminds me too much of these experiences, which leaves me like a fussy three-year old who is ready to throw a tantrum at the drop of a hat.

This all came to a head this week when we went to Aligarh, a city in Uttar Pradesh and home of the Aligarh Muslim University, to see the different levels of healthcare delivery. (Let me also say here that I didn't realize that this was the purpose of the trip until the third or fourth day in. Students asked us on the first day what we were doing in the illustrious city of Aligarh, and I couldn't tell them. I just shrugged and pretended that I didn't understand what they were trying to say.)

Over the last week, I've seen at least four different hospitals. I was thrust into a TB clinic without really being told what to do except stare at the patients who walked in to see the doctor. On the way home, we waited for a train that was three hours late and still found ourselves hopping onto a moving car. Our group was constantly harassed by locals, who insisted on taking pictures of us. We were shuttled around in this tour bus without really being told where we were going, but we always ended up at some sort of healthcare facility. Seeing what we did was really cool, and I've got some good photographs and some even better stories out of it. Above are some pictures that I think really capture my Aligarh experience. I guess this is what experiential learning is all about, or something. I just hope our next excursion doesn't leave me with the same bitter taste in my mouth or makes me want to curl up and hyperventilate...

At least I don't have dysentery anymore.