India!!!! This country was the most amazing, crazy, sad, fantastic, poor, wealthy, place ever. It is definitely a country of contradictions. Everything is magnified by like 4xs. I will try to give you the best description of it that I can, but it is so hard to do it justice… y’all will just have to go.
The first day we got there was a free day before we went off on our 4 day long SAS trip up north. We all went out and tried to go to a outdoor market, unfortunately our rickshaw drivers had a different plan for us. We got stuck in the loop of expensive stores that the drivers got commission if we bought something. We were not the only ones and saw several other SAS groups being dragged along the same route. After about three of us trying to tell them that we didn’t want to go to these places we chose to leave and went to pay. Before getting into the rickshaws we agreed on a price of 100 Rupees per rickshaw (about $2.30) however when we went to pay the drivers all plotted against us and told us that we owed them 300 rupees apiece. After a heated conversation we compromised and paid 100 a person, but it was a fiasco, we never ended up where we wanted to go and we paid double what we wanted. We made the best of it and walked around finding a very cool Hindu temple and then an air-conditioned (very important) restaurant where half of us ordered a typical launch special. It was crazy, the soup was very good and then they brought us out these trays with tons of sauces and bread/nan and rice. They laughed at us as we tried to eat it and then they began to help us mix it. You put a pile of rice on your banana leaf and then put on 2 or 3 different sauces mix it all together and eat it with your hands. It was crazy, and surprisingly nobody got sick!! Some was good and some wasn’t so good, but I had fun. That night we went out trying to see a Bollywood movie, and we went to the nice mall. It was so westernized with pizza hut KFC and Baskin Robbins. We never saw the movie because it was sold out, but we made it to a all you could eat Indian buffet where they took pictures of us and videos of us eating, and afterwards they took us back to the kitchen were everybody wanted pictures. One thing I have come to realize everybody wants a picture with me because I am a white blond hair blue eyed girl, this has happened in every single country I have been to except Spain.
The next day we left to get on a plane to fly north to Delhi. On our way there I watched as a man got off of his motorcycle pulled open the door of the van behind him and started wailing on the driver. He then proceeded to pull him out of the van punch him to the ground and start kicking him. I was completely amazing and scared. I do not know what happened because the bus drove away, but it was something I have never seen ever in my life, and couldn’t figure out what the man did to deserve that punishment. In Delhi we drove around and saw some monuments. We stopped at a Mongol temple, and my favorite part of the day was that we then stopped at the site of Gandhi’s cremation. It was very simple and beautiful, and gave off a feeling of calm and peacefulness that was rare in the city of 16 million and the country of 3 billion. There we were asked again to take a picture with a man’s wife and young son.
Normally I would not talk about hotels, because they are kind of boring, but the hotel we stayed in Delhi was so pretty it was a five star hotel and amazing. The weird thing was that randomly the power would go out throughout the hotel for like 5 seconds at a time, and the staff would think nothing of it because it happens so frequently.
The next day we woke up at 4 to head to the train station to travel to Agra. Driving through the city was shocking as people were asleep on the sidewalks, train station, and even a few in the street because the sidewalk was full. It made you feel bad because we were in a super nice hotel and there were so many people who didn’t even have a roof. Poverty was the most prevalent in India and made you think if you deserve everything that you have. In Agra we saw more Mongol forts and temples before going to the Taj Mahal. The building was amazing, it took your breath away and we stunningly build and cared for, but it never really gave me the OMG moment that the rest of the country gave me. I do feel extremely grateful that I was able to see it though and was amazed with the architecture. We stayed until the sun set and then after dinner returned to Delhi on a late train.
Another shocking part of India happened at the train stations, in Agra especially. I had heard about the mutation of people so they could receive more money while begging, but I hadn’t seen much of it until we went to the train stations. There were man without legs and many had missing fingers and toes. One man even had elephantiasis to the feet and it was unbelievable watching him walk around. It makes you feel so fortunate, but also makes you wonder hoe the country allows for this to happen. Also on the first night when Rachel, Paul and I were coming home to the ship we were the only ones around and being followed by a child asking for money. We know that we weren’t suppose to give them money, but he was the only one around and we were close to the gate and security so Rachel gave him a 2 rupee coin. When we walked through the gate Rach and I turned around only to see the child giving the money to a man. After that we only gave extra food. Even when we did that there was no glimpse of hope or appreciation in the eyes of the kids, more like fear that they were going to lose it all again. It was soo sad to watch, and you couldn’t even imagine living with that fear your whole life.
The fourth day we flew to Varanasi. Which is one of the most amazing places I have ever been. I know I keep on saying that, but it is so hard to describe the feelings of the city and how important and religious it is to the people of the Hindu religion. We took a rickshaw (bike) ride down to the Ganges to watch an evening religious ceremony. While riding down the street Ariel and I got spit on by a man walking past. He has spit a mouthful of the leeche fruit with seeds all over us. We were shocked, overwhelmed, scared, pissed, and confused. It was the first bit of hatred that either one of us had received since being there and didn’t understand why he spit on us. Our tour guide told us we were not dressed appropriately, but both of us had on long loose fitting pants, our shoulders were covered and there was no cleavage at all. Also looking around to how some of the other girls were dressed we were conservative. The nice part was that our driver was very nice about it and when he turned around and saw what happened he took off his scarf and offered it to us to wipe off the spit. Who knows if that was clean, but we accepted it with gratitude and then afterwards he kept on pointing out things on the ride and was extremely kind to us.
The ceremony was crazy! It was unbelievable how many people there were and how important it was for them. The sight was breath taking, not to include the colors, sounds, and smells.
I haven’t spoken much about the smell of India, and I feel like I should because it is very distinctive. It is hard to describe, but it was like a mixture of BO, Poop, incense, spices, food and flowers (used a lot in many of the ceremonies and culturally). There were many times when you would think that you got use to the smell, and then something horrible would hit you. It even got so bad that you would grimace when you smelled it and you would want to breath through your mouth, but at the same time didn’t because you felt like the air was not clean. However, there were many other times when you would catch the smell of some food and would continually take deep breaths in because it smelled so good. As I said it was a country of contradictions.
The next day was another early morning when we woke up at 4 to go to the river, get on a boat and watch the activities that surround the Ganges and are the center of life in Varanasi. We saw several people bathing in the water, others washing their clothes, many praying, and we even went to the site of cremations, and saw two bodies being burned. Our guide described the process and explained that the eldest member of the family would come and throw the ashes into the river. It was all a part of the Hindu belief in reincarnation. We even saw ashes being thrown into the river. The sight was again indescribable. It was hard to grasp the importance of the river in the lives of so many people. The legend goes that when the Ganges asked Vishnu if they could come to earth he replies yes and they landed on his head (the top of a mountain which I forgot the name) and then flowed down his head. Varanasi is the place where Vishnu then decided to settle down making it the most holy city in the Hindu religion. I think I got the story right.
After the river the guide was going to take us to the place where Buddha gave his first sermon, or something of importance with the Buddhist culture, and although it would have been interesting we felt that we had not yet been given the chance to really get out and experience India, and we opted out of the tour. Instead we went back down to the river and walked around taking in all of the sights, and did some shopping. The hustle and bustle was crazy. There are just soo many people that you cannot believe it. There were also a lot of cows and dogs. We were told that most of the dogs are strays, but few are kept as pets. It was fun to look around outside of a huge group and see India outside of a bus window.
We flew home that night and dint return until about 1:00 in the morning. The final day in India was a low-key day we went back to the market, and did some last minute shopping. So that’s that. All in all it was an eye open, fun, amazing, sad, contradicting experience.
As I said before each country gets better and better. Now time for school again. Two tests in 3 days whoohoo L (I actually did pretty well on my Global studies, but have yet to get back Finance)
Miss you all, again sorry it is such a long blog. I will try to get some pictures up soon.
PS I hope this makes sense I just drank a lot of coffee and am a little shaky J
