Dehradun

Writing in from Dehradun!!! Our program ended Friday and everyone flew back this past weekend. The three desi's are still in the desh...Sophia is in Bangalore while Farah and I arrived in Dehradun early yesterday morning. We took in a late night train on Saturday (AC 2-Tier Sleeper) and checked in at the Best Western here. Have a real bathroom after four-weeks (the closest we got bfr was at IHMR but there was no shower curtain there). And most importantly a Coffee Day right across.

Dehradun is a hill station located in Uttaranchal that is a key getaway spot for many. It is known as the gateway to the Himalayas and basically the anti-thesis of Delhi. Small-town atmosphere...clearly influenced by the once existing British colony here and also not as hot!!! There is also a lot of military/army influence here---yesterday we passed a military cantonment area and also a lot of houses belonging to formal military officials. We will be here until Thursday when we will head back to Delhi for one-night and thereafter fly to Bombay on Friday morning.

In terms of public health...it is amazing to see the difference here...while we haven't conducted any form of a community assessment it is nonetheless apparent that things are different here then in Delhi...no big-town issues w/a large population or excessive pollution...I am not sure what the key public health concerns here are but I guess that just means one more thing to conduct a lit review on.

A big thanks to Farah's bua Chandrikaunty w/whom went spent a wonderful Saturday---she fed us and fed us and fed us :):):) We will be spending the night there on Thursday as well...keeping this short as there is not much more to write...