India: 3/5-3/9

India was certainly all of the things I was told it would be, and also a whole lot more. From the second we stepped off the boat until we pulled out of the port in Chennai, every one of your senses was attacked with the rush of India.

This was my first trip traveling with a large group of people, and although it was fun to get to meet new people on the trip, trying to get around the temples of India with 90 people is not exactly an easy thing to do.

The first day we piled onto the air conditioned buses (it was about 97 degrees in Chennai) and headed to the airport. I was a little nervous since it was also my first time flying in a port, but the airport was very modern and clean. And other than the fact that my ears popped the entire flight it was easy and the hot meal provided was delicious.

We landed in Delhi and went to the hotel where we had dinner and some drinks on the rooftop. The area of Delhi where we were staying for the night was quiet with mostly houses and shops, and the waiters at the hotel told us that there was really nowhere to go out within a 45 minute drive. Since people were pretty tired from the day of traveling, most of the group went to bed, but a couple of us stayed up. A lot of fireworks were being set off nearby and our waiters told us that they were in celebration of local weddings. We joked about trying to go to one, although secretly I really wanted to go. Then someone suggested that we just try and find it, worst thing to happen is that we spend a little time seeing some of the city. Long story short, the 6 of us found the wedding, and we were welcomed in by about a thousand Indian’s with open arms. The party had spilled out from the tent into the streets with drummers and sparklers and people dressed in the most amazing colors I’d ever seen. Oh and also, there were elephants. In my excitement I pointed to one of them, and all of a sudden two Indian men had my feet and I was lifted up onto it. From the top I could see the entire party tent, and it was spectacular. My friend Phil hopped on with me and we rode around the street where the party was being celebrated by all of the children. After being lowered down (which is a little scary on an elephant) we were dragged into the thick of the party. At this point things got a little questionable, since we weren’t really sure if we were allowed to be there. We spent a little time dancing around, and I’m definitely in the bride and groom’s wedding video and pictures, but after a little while we got the impression that it was time for us to go. I’m still not completely sure how welcome we were, but it was definitely an experience, and I got my one wish of what I wanted to see in India on the first night there!

The next day we went to three different sites around Delhi. The first was an amazing Hindu temple called Shri Laskshmi Narain that was red and yellow on the outside. This was where I first realized that I’d have to get used to seeing swastikas, a Hindu symbol for peace, all over the place. The inside of the temple was covered in colorful murals of the Hindu gods, and a really nice local man who spoke English translated some of the stories for me. We walked around with our shoes off and it was really peaceful. Next we went to a place called India Gate which commemorated the many Indian soldiers who died fighting for the British. It was a large arch that was a little reminiscent of an industrial Arc de Triomphe with three flags in front of in representing the Indian army, navy and air force. There is also a fire in front of it that burns constantly. The last place we visited was called Koutour Minar, which is the largest brick minaret in the world. It is surrounded by the ruins of 6 other monuments. The entire area was so big and we spent a while just wandering. Here we met some small beggar children who we gave stickers and spent some of our day with. Two little boys, a young girl and their infant baby sister wandered around the worksite of the ruins nearby their mom while she carried rocks on her head. They were so sweet and friendly, and when we saw them a little later digging through the trash with the baby in their arms it really broke my heart. This was not our first encounter with the beggars of India. We had been accosted at almost every tourist area we stopped at. People were in our faces selling small and useless handicrafts for next to nothing, and everyone trying to sell the same things. I really don’t know how anyone makes any money at all when they all have the exact same things to sell. We left the ruins and began our six hour drive to Agra.

Here, we ate again at the restaurant which had a spun on the roof. We sat with some Indian business men. Some of them were really nice and friendly and wanted to talk about India and ask about America, but there was one guy who was really creepy and kept trying to take pictures of us. After asking one too many times for him to stop, we decided it was best just to leave and head to bed. In the morning we had a 5:30am wake up call and boarded decorated horse-drawn rickshaws and headed to the Taj Mahal. We waited in a pretty long line but we made it in just in time to see the sun come up over it. The Taj is really impossible to explain on paper. It’s more beautiful than pictures can capture and its amazing that someone built this for another person simply out of love, and that she never got to see it. We spent the whole morning wandering around inside the buildings and in the gardens and trying to see it from every angle. We left in a state of awe. Before heading to our next destination, we stopped at the Red Fort. The first recorded history of this giant expanse of buildings was in 1080 AD, when it was the central of the Agra government. From the top, there is a perfect view of the Taj Mahal. After seeing entire fort and realizing that monkeys are about as common in India as squirrels are in American (one tried to jump on my shoulder!) we headed to the buses for an 8 hour ride to Jaipur.

We all pretty much crashed once we got to the hotel. At this point I was already proud of myself for trying all different kinds of Indian food and not getting sick! In the morning we went to a place called the Amber Palace, where we rode elephants to the top of a giant structure built into a hill. Even though we’d already been to so many beautiful sights, I continued to be amazing by how detailed and how large of a scale all of these sites are and how they possibly could have been built without modern tools. This palace was built for Hindu kings and was made out of yellow and marble. It even had an entire wall with different shaped mirrors embedded in it. After this we stopped just to look at the summer palace at the bottom of the mountain which looks like its floating in the middle of the lake. The beauty of this palace was however somewhat masked by the horrible amount of trash floating everywhere in the lake. Pollution is truly a problem that Indian needs to deal with, but when you see the amount of trash and people on top of the lack of space, you wonder where you could even begin. After leaving here, we went to a textile factory. This was one of my favorite stops on the trip. Here we saw the entire process of how Indian textiles are made, from the man who hand weaves at the loom to the woman who picks out every individual flaw in the stitching. It was really incredible, and it takes over 4 months of hand-made work to produce the final product. We also saw a demonstration on block printing, which is a tedious process that I would never have the patience for. When they took us into a massive textile store full of saree’s and scarves afterwards, I couldn’t even buy anything because I was so overwhelmed by the amount of work it took to make each piece. Our last stop was The Jaipur temple where the king of Jaipur still lives. This was another beautiful sight where we saw traditional dancers and a snake charmer outside the entranceway! We spent the rest of our afternoon bartering in the markets where we met a really nice shop owner who took us to the rooftop and showed us a wonderful view of the city at night.

In the morning, we woke up at 4am to make our flight. We thought we were heading straight back to Chennai, but our plane made two other stops, one of which was in Bombay (which I learned is actually the same place as Mumbai). About 100 yards from our plane were shacks made out of tin that looks exactly like the ones in South Africa. The poor population of the city was literally spilling onto the runway. As we took off over the city, you could see that almost every inch o the city was covered in either a building or pollution. I’ve never seen anything like it.

When we arrived back in Chennai, we spent a little time in a local shopping center where we finally got to eat Dossahs for lunch (great recommendation dad!) and do some last minute shopping. We bargained with a driver of a motorized rickshaw (basically a moped with walls and extra seats) and made our way back to the ship.

Walking through the port and back to the gangway took about 20 minutes. It was here that my whole experience in India really hit me. The air was so thick with pollution that I could barely breathe, and the ground was covered in a layer of thick black filth. Even here in the outskirts of the city, the haggling continued. It was then that I realized that every single person we’d met in this country that is full of mouths desperately in need of feeding was fighting. Fighting for our patronage outside of their shops, fighting for our money, fighting to convince us that they were worse off then the next person and deserved whatever we had to give. Even the smallest children fought or were being used to fight. Children whose arms had been cut off by starving parents and babies who had been drugged and loaned out for begging were abundant in every city, so much so that we had almost become desensitized to the horror. Every person was fighting just to survive, and once I realized this, the magnitude of the problems that these people face were even more apparent to me. I saw then that it was impossible to decide who should receive my handouts, who is worthy of the generosity that I can give only because I am lucky. It’s like looking up at the night sky and trying to pick just one star to save.