I N D I A ! ! !

This was written very quick so hopefully it’s not all over the place! Sorry its so late!

Planes, Trains, & Rickshaws
India was nothing what I would have imagined and I don’t think I can even explain half of the stuff I saw and experienced in words. Some of the stuff there really is no words for. I really wish there was some way that everyone at home could experience the past five days that I just did. It was the biggest culture shock of my entire life and I can now see why so many Semester at Sea students have said that this trip changes their lives. I’m so happy that I got to experience being in India, but it is absolutely not a place I would ever see myself coming back to. I’ll do my best trying to capture everything I saw and experienced in my blog, but like I said some of it you can’t explain.
So when I woke up as we were pulling into port, I could already smell something horrible. As I walked up a couple decks, the smell got stronger and stronger. It was the smell of India – not explainable, just horrible! Since I was leaving for my Semester at Sea trip at 2:30 in the afternoon on that first day, I decided not to get off the ship until then. My trip was a group of 70 students and we were going to Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi. The bus ride was just about an hour to get to the Chennai Airport. While waiting to get our boarding passes I went to the bathroom. As one of my friends put it as I was walking back out of the bathroom, “You have the most mortified look on your face right now!” And yes, it was mortifying. I walked into the stall and literally it was a hole in the floor. And thank god I brought my own toilet paper because apparently I don’t think they believe in it. After getting our boarding passes, we went to the gate and immediately boarded the plane. It was a 2½ hour flight from Chennai to Delhi. The flight was really nice and there were TVs in the headrests in front of us. Friends was on for most of the flight so it made it go by quick. Getting to the hotel was a pretty quick bus ride. There were two other SAS groups staying in the same hotel so it was packed. It was Hotel Ashok which was really nice. My room was like a suite with a living room, dining room table, two twin beds, and a bathroom with a separate shower and tub. After dinner I went to sleep since I had to get up at 4am the next day. After our wake up call, we took a bus to the train station. This is where the culture shock really set in. We first had to cross the road to get to the train station from where the bus dropped us off. This was a joke. You know that game Frogger that used to be really popular? Yea, that was us. Literally you had to run and stop and run and stop to get past one car at a time. Not only cars, though. There were buses, tractors, cars, taxis, vans, motorized rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, and even COWS! As 70 of us mostly American students walked into the train station, local people were staring at us like we were aliens or something. They, no joke, stopped walking around and just stared. At least when we were staring at them, we didn’t let them know it! You wouldn’t believe how many people were sleeping on the floor of the train station with nothing but their shirt or jacket as a blanket. Not even a pillow on the cement floor. It didn’t seem to faze the people here in India since they just walked right over them to get on the train or around the station. Our group was lucky enough to get a first class air conditioned bus on the train. First class in the US is WAY different than first class in India. The first class train we were on is just like the regular seats on any train in the US. It was a two hour ride to Agra which most of us slept. The tiredness was already setting in from having to wake up at 4. I woke up just before we were getting the train station. As I was watching out the window, I saw person after person squatting down in the middle of fields, on the side of the road, anywhere. It took me a while to realize and to comprehend that they were actually squatting because they were pooping just like that. They didn’t care who went by them, who saw them, who was around them, where they were, anything! Getting off the train, we were bombarded with beggars; both young and old. Little children would come up to any one of us and put their hand to their mouth asking for food. We were told to just ignore them and not say or do anything to them and they would go away. Our guides told us that if we even attempted to give one beggar a drink or something to eat that we would immediately be swarmed with many others. Once again, the people in the airport stared at us. From the airport, we went to a hotel for breakfast and then set off to see an abandoned city. Driving in India is chaotic! The bigger the vehicle, the more right-of-way you have. There is no such thing as staying in your lane and actually not even a correct side of the road. As other vehicles wanted to pass you or wanted you to know that they were coming, they would beep. If something was in the front of them and they wanted them to move, they would beep. Beeping was a constant noise while on the streets of India. I don’t understand how there aren’t more people hit by cars or how there aren’t more accidents. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t see one. After breakfast, we had an hour bus ride to get to this abandoned city. At a certain point we had to get off our regular bus and onto a battery operated bus to take us into the city. We walked around for about an hour there. “Students” would come up to us and ask us if we wanted a tour and that they worked for the tour company and weren’t looking for money. Luckily enough, we knew that they were making this up. When we got back on the bus our tour guide told us that they were all fake and in the end just wanted to get some money. After another bus ride back we went to lunch at the same hotel we went to breakfast at. Soon after lunch, it was time for the TAJ MAHAL! We had to walk down a long road where beggars would attack you, there were so many deformed/crippled people just sitting in the streets with their hands out asking for money. We got in our own special line to get into the Taj which was really weird. Everyone from India, once again, was looking at us like we had 7 heads or something. From the spot that we entered into the complex, you couldn’t see the actual Taj Mahal. As soon as you turned one corner, though, there it was! It was amazing!!! I took soooooo many pictures, more than I thought I would. My group of 70 took a group photo in front of it also. After taking pictures outside, we wanted to go inside of it. We had to get a pair of booties to go over our shoes or else we had to take our shoes off. I wore the booties. It was a quite attractive look haha. Walking around inside was weird. There were no lights on at all. I got to see the tomb of the lady that the Taj was built for. The entire building was built by hand in marble. People carved out pieces of the marble to be able to put other parts in. When we walked out the back entrance to it, we were overlooking a river. Wild dogs were swimming in the river back and forth. There were a bunch of different men washing the Taj. They were sitting up on what we would call ladders, but they weren’t metal. They were pieces of wood put together and somehow it made a ladder. After being at the Taj for a long while and being able to take it all in, we walked back to the bus and then went on our way to Agra Fort. We walked around there which was beautiful. Finally after the fort, we got to go shopping! We went to a marble making factory. This marble is the same marble that the Taj was made with. We got to see people actually working on the marble and carving it so other pieces could fit in. Finally after shopping, we got dinner and headed back to the crazy train station for our train back to Delhi. The train station was once again a shocker. I remember one small kid, probably around 5 years old holding an even smaller child on his hip. The baby had no clothes on and the little boy was telling us how he had two other siblings. There I was standing with two full bottles of water in my hands, so I gave them one of them. Luckily for me, I wasn’t surrounded by tons of other beggars. Our whole group was surrounded, though. A lot of us were giving away food and drinks to the children. Our train came and we got on it and made hour two hour ride back to Delhi. Once in Delhi, we just went to bed for the night.
On the third day in India, we woke up at 6am and ate breakfast. We left the hotel at 7:30 and went to the place where Gandhi was cremated. There was a slate of marble in the middle of a field that had an eternal flame. Two men were there cleaning up the area around the marble. It was blocked off to visitors, but we could walk up to where the wall was. We then drove around Delhi for a little while and then finally went to the airport for our flight to Varanasi. It was a quick one hour flight. Once in Varanasi, we went to the site where Buddha gave his first sermon. The spot where he stood is now a stupa!!!!! It looks nothing like the one near Mr. Brown’s though Mom! haha I was surprised to hear that it was the same thing. While we were there, there was a bus full of adults from Sri Lanka and they were circling the stupa chanting something. Our tour guide told us to go join, in so we did! It was quite the experience. After this visit, we headed to our hotel which was the Radisson. It made me feel like I was hope since it looked exactly like any other Radisson in the US. I almost forgot that I was in India while I was there. Then I walked back outside and got ready for a bicycle rickshaw ride. I snapped right out of thinking that I was back in America. Our rickshaw ride was about a half hour long until we had to get off and walk a little. We were on our way to the Ganges River at night for a religious ceremony that they do every night. After walking down the street for a couple minutes, we then had to walk down an alley. There were cows all over the middle of the alley and the street. Finally we got to the river. This is where I begin to become speechless for what I experienced. I can’t really explain what I saw but I’ll do my best. I walked down a huge flight of stairs and climbed into a riverboat with 20 or so other students that were on my trip. The ceremony had already started. There were about 6 or 7 priests standing closest to the river and a whole stadium type place filled with hundreds of people. We all got to light candles in flowers and let them go and float in the river. After the river cruise we took the rickshaws back to the hotel and had dinner. After a very exhausting, mentally and physically, we all went to bed. We had another early morning wake up call the next morning.
Waking up early that last day was rough, but so worth it when we went back to the river for another river cruise. We saw people bathing, singing, and even burning on the banks of the river. We went to two of the crematoriums and one person was being cremated right there. There was a dead dog that passed by floating in the river. It was actually quite disturbing. We went up and down the river for about two hours then headed back to the hotel for breakfast. We didn’t have much time before our flights back to Chennai. One group of 20 (the group was 70 people total) were on the earlier flight, and I was one of the lucky ones on that flight. We got to the airport and all the flights were delayed because the Prime Minister was flying into the Varanasi Airport. They have SUCH high security for that. Finally after a couple hours of waiting we were ready to board. As we were walking out to our plane on the runway, the Prime Minister of India was walking off his plane! It was pretty sweet! The flights were good and I completely passed out since I was so tired!
The last day in Chennai, Ananda and I took a rickshaw ride around town and went shopping..LOTS!! = ) We had lunch at a local restaurant where we were the only foreigners in there! It was pretty amusing. We tried to go see a movie at one of the theatres but they were all sold out. We did some more shopping and then went to one of Mother Theresa’s orphanages. It was another one of the unexplainable things of India. The children couldn’t speak and most of them could barely move. They were so happy to see us all though! One lady that worked there picked up one of the babies and put him on my lap as soon as I sat down. If there was a possible way to sneak that poor little baby on the ship for the rest of voyage I definitely would have done it! After being at the orphanage, we came back to the ship and ate dinner and went to sleep early!
India was definitely a huge culture shock and probably some place that I wouldn’t ever go back to. I had an amazing time while I was there, but I’m SOOO excited to get to Malaysia and Borneo in a couple of days!!! MISS YOU ALL SO MUCHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! xoxoxoxoxooxoxxo