India!!!

Namaste. It wasn’t until coming to India that I knew that phrase outside of yoga and rather as a way of saying a friendly hello. I’m not really sure where to begin to express my experience in India. I can’t possibly explain what I saw, what I encountered, and what I felt during this portion of my trip around the world, but I will certainly try.
We arrived on Tuesday and realized the port in Chennai was nothing but a ship yard. We woke up around 8 a.m. to eat breakfast and the smell instantly seeped into our ship. The best way to explain it was the smell of a large campfire… at the time I wasn’t really sure why it would smell like that, but found out later that instead of having trash cans and throwing things away, people just dump their trash on the sides of the roads and then maybe a few months later people will sweep it into a large pile and set it on fire. Not a very productive or sanitary system if you ask me. The first day I am ashamed to admit I didn’t get off of the ship, but with good reason. Jess and Tessa had an FDP (required trip by their professor) to go to Tata Consulting, who literally owns India’s entire infrastructure. They make cars, plastic, software, etc, you name it, and they make it. Aside from them, all of our other friends who were doing India independently and weren’t on an SAS organized trip left that first day, so I thought it would be smart to not wander India by myself. Even the guys wouldn’t go out by themselves. So anyway, I had time to pack for our trip to Delhi that was leaving the next morning at 3:30 a.m. until Jess and Tessa got back. We had planned on going out to dinner when they got back, but just from what they saw they said it would be best to just eat on the ship. So we ate dinner and went to bed relatively early since we were getting up at 3.
That night was less like sleep and more like a nap, which pretty much sums up the next few days of our journey around northern India. We left the ship around 4 a.m. and headed to the airport with our group of about 30 students. Airports are very interesting in India… they warned us that security was even worse than in the U.S. You absolutely are not supposed to bring any liquids on; you must check them, and the ones you check have to be less than 4 oz. So we had to put all of our toiletries in our Ziploc bags and put them in one giant bag to be checked, praying they didn’t lose it. Once we got our tickets we were sent upstairs to go through security, which was also very interesting. They have the security lines split up into male and female lines. Everyone gets frisked, but the females get frisked behind a curtain, while the males get frisked openly. I’m not sure why they do this because the exact same thing they are doing to the males they do to the females, except behind a curtain. Odd. And if you didn’t know, the ratio of females to males on the ship is quite skewed. There are 70% females and 30% males… so guess who had the longer line. We waited for about 45 minutes to get through a security line that would probably take 10 minutes in America. So next time you think American airport security is slow, be glad you’re not in India. Now something I haven’t talked about in my blogs are the experiences I’ve had on the actual airplanes in these countries. It didn’t really occur to me until coming to India how much airlines in America get away with not giving you good food. This has pretty much been my conclusion after every plane ride I have had thus far, but the Indian airlines went even beyond what I had in South Africa and Brazil. First, the plane has more staff to tend to literally your every need. They begin the flight with a cold towel (a service I have only seen on overseas flights), and this is before you even take off. The flight we took from Chennai to Delhi was only two hours, and I don’t think the flight attendants sat down once. After they collected the cold towels they began their drink service with assorted juices, coffee, tea, sodas, the norm, but then came the meal! First of all, on a two hour flight in America you are lucky to get pretzels these days. But in India, like South Africa, you get a full meal. I thought you had to be in first class to use real silver wear and dishes to eat and drink, but not so. Of course they have vegetarian and non- vegetarian dishes, glass cups for your tea or coffee, cloth napkins, mints, silver wear, etc. I avoided the first flight’s meal because I hadn’t yet exposed my stomach to Indian food and didn’t really think the first time should be on an airplane, but everyone else really liked their meal. After the meal there were plenty more opportunities to get more drinks, and as we made our decent into Delhi they came with a candy basket! Also, I have never seen more people press the flight attendant call button for extra things like blankets, newspapers, etc. Indians don’t wait for the flight attendant to walk by; rather they have no problem pressing that little button as much as they want. On the way home, the man in front of me probably pushed it at least 5 times. OK, so enough about the airplanes, on to the important stuff…
We arrived in New Delhi (the capital of India) around 9 a.m. and immediately boarded our tour bus, and were greeted with fresh flower leis. Our understanding of the itinerary was that we were getting a tour of Old Delhi and then taking a train to Agra, however we were surprised to find out we were driving to Agra, which took about 5 hours! And I just LOVE car trips, especially on a bus with no bathroom… I’ll get to that funny (now it’s funny… not so much at the time) story in a minute. The guide explained to us that Delhi is 8 cities built on top and around each other. We went to the first Mosque built in Old Delhi, in a year that I can’t remember because I saw and heard so many places and numbers, but it was extremely old, put it that way. Aside from the stares we got from the few Indians at the airport for being white, the Mosque was really the first true experience of people literally stopping to stare at us. We walked around for a while and I had stayed behind the group a little bit to take some pictures and was walking back to catch up with them when this woman stopped me. She was with her husband and daughter who was probably around 18, and holding her camera, so I thought she wanted me to take a picture of her family for her. She couldn’t really speak good English, but boy was I wrong. I started to take the camera from her and she started shaking her head at me and pushed her daughter toward me and started pointing at us to get closer together. I soon realized that her daughter wanted a picture with me… not sure why, I guess it’s the fact I was white, but then it got even funnier/ weirder. After I took the picture with the daughter, the mother gave the camera to her and I had to take another picture with the woman and her husband, which was even more awkward. Finally the daughter spoke English and asked me where I was from. When I said the U.S. they all got really excited and thanked me for taking the picture. I have to admit as I was walking away I checked my bag to make sure I wasn’t an idiot and hadn’t just been robbed or something; you can’t be too careful. I just found this particular experience so funny because we would never stop a foreigner in the U.S. to take a picture with them, but I guess that’s because we actually have people who aren’t just one race. After visiting the Mosque, we were taken to a silk rug maker and I guess they thought we were these American students just rolling in cash because they actually tried to sell us huge silk rugs for thousands of dollars. They showed us how they were made, which was pretty neat, since each stitch is done one by one by hand, and only the rug maker can read the secret code of how to make the rug. I’m not sure if our guide gets a cut of the sales they make, but we really didn’t understand why we were taken there considering nothing in the store was in our price range. After we left the rug place we headed for lunch, which was interesting because we really didn’t know what we were eating. This was my first taste of non (spelling? I have no clue how to spell it- but it’s India flat bread) bread, and without this I probably would have starved in India. We finished up lunch and got back on the bus, where they started selling us beer to drink on the way there, which we thought was kind of strange, but whatever. I didn’t drink any because I was afraid it would make me have to go to the bathroom before our next stop that was 2.5 hours away, assuming I could even make it 2.5 hours. Well surprise, surprise (and thanks to the lovely small bladder genes I inherited from my father)… my water went right through me and when you’re on a very bumpy bus on basically dirt, pothole filled roads it’s very difficult to hold it. This would also be a good time to mention that when people in India have to pee, they just go, right there on the sidewalk or street, right in front of everyone. The first person I saw I hit Jess and was like Oh My Gosh!, look at that person peeing right there… well that wasn’t even the worst of it… to put it nicely, people don’t just pee on the side of the roads. People will just pull down there pants and squat right there!! So seeing all of this made me have to go to the bathroom even worse!! I went up to our nice tour guide lady and told her I had to go very badly and she was like well I’m not sure I can really guarantee you a very nice bathroom and after seeing everyone going to the bathroom on the side of the road, I would just be happy to have a bathroom in general. So because of me we had to pull the bus over to this very sketchy gas station to use their “bathroom” if you’d even call it that. Words cannot explain how absolutely disgusting this bathroom was… probably the worst I’ve seen in my life. Of course there was no toilet paper, but I came well prepared. And don’t think there was an actual toilet, I’m not sure that idea has made it to India… there are only holes in the ground. I wasn’t about to complain though since I made the whole bus pull over, but I now know why people go on the side of the roads and don’t try to find a bathroom… because the side of the road is cleaner than public restrooms!!! Needless to say I bathed myself in my antibacterial hand gel when I got back on the bus. We stopped an hour later for the scheduled break and then continued onto Agra to check into our hotel. Now India may be really dirty, but our five star hotel was awesome. We ate a great buffet dinner then all went to sleep since our guide informed us that we were getting wake up calls at 5 a.m. to go see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. For anything else you couldn’t have paid me to get out of my wonderfully comfortable bed, but if the Taj Mahal isn’t a good enough reason then I don’t know what is. The Taj was only about ten minutes away from the hotel and we pulled up to a parking lot where we had to board electric buses because no cars/ buses are allowed within a mile of the Taj Mahal for pollution reasons. Once we got off of the electric buses, we were bombarded with young men and boys trying to sell us stuff. The people were so desperate that they would pick one person and follow them to the entrance in hopes that you would get so annoyed with them you would just buy from them to get them to go away. (which happened often) In all of my travels I have never seen such desperate people trying to sell you stuff. I felt so bad saying no to skinny, starving little boys but if you weren’t stern they would never leave you alone. I ended up getting suckered into buying a book of postcards for 100 Rupees ($2.50). On a happier note, the Taj Mahal was absolutely amazing. Seeing it in person is very different than what you see in pictures. It is almost as if you are in a different world when you compare it to the filth and despair just outside its gates. We spent the first thirty minutes just taking pictures in front of it until we decided that we should actually go into it. It wasn’t until this trip that I found out the Taj was a tomb built for an old Indian ruler’s wife, and the inside was a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be. Interesting fact: The pillars on either side of the Taj actually tilt away from the building, so if there were an earthquake they wouldn’t fall on it. We went back to the hotel for breakfast and then headed to the first city of Agra and then to the Red Fort of Agra. Throughout the day we continued to be swarmed by beggars and people trying to sell us their stuff. You should know that every morning we port in a country diplomats come on to discuss with us a few things we should know not to do, current political and social problems, current events, and anything else they think would be beneficial for us to know. The morning of landing in India the two women who visited us from the U.S. Embassy educated us on popular scams that people will try to pull. Like rickshaw drivers will try to tell you that the market you want to go to is miraculously closed that day and want to take you to one that’s a little farther away. Or they will take you half way and try to get you to stop at another store (which their best friends probably owns) before they will take you to the place you really want to go. My favorite one they told us was that security guards might ask to look at our passport and then tell you to get it back you must give them 100 Rupees. Ridiculous, huh? Well it actually happens. We arrived to the first city of Agra and at this point Jess, Tessa and I were a little tired of following our large group around so we kind of just sat in this court yard area and started to wander around by ourselves. (it’s not as dangerous as it sounds, it was a very small fenced in area) Anyways, we had these men coming up to us who kept saying “we work here, let me take you around, I will show you around, better than your group, you learn more.” I didn’t think this was a good idea, but we followed this guy up until we got to the gate, and he wanted us to go outside of the fenced area and that’s when we said no, we’ll go find our group. We told the guy we weren’t going to pay him ahead of time for showing us around, and he seemed so persistent to show us a Mosque that was up the hill. Well we weren’t dumb enough to go with him, but some guy in our group was. The guide told him he had to take off his shoes before he could enter, and since this was common he did it without asking questions, then the guide picked up his shoes and demanded 50 Rupees. What a scam, right? Later that day we went to the Red Fort of Agra, where the builder of the Taj Mahal lived. Now something I haven’t mentioned is the abundance of cows and monkeys that just roam the streets of the cities. Since cows are sacred they literally just walk up and down the sidewalks with the people. They will cross the streets and this is the one thing that the crazy drivers won’t hit. The diplomats also warned us of crossing the street, explaining how absolutely dangerous it is and to not do it unless you are very careful. They said if you really need to cross the street to grab a cow, then you might be safe. Hitting a cow and killing it is a much bigger offense than killing a pedestrian. And the monkeys and cows aren’t afraid of anything… they just sit there and eat out of dumpsters and walk around like they own the place. So back to the fort in Agra… there were monkeys everywhere inside the fort. I guess if I were a monkey that’s where I’d choose to live, because you have shelter and tons of places to jump around and climb. And guess what we saw… more monkey love-making! The monkeys would jump down and try to grab people’s water bottles and bags hoping to find food and if you got too close to their little babies they hissed at you. There was one really aggressive monkey that kept jumping down in front of people and growling and hissing and at one point we all ran away from it because we were actually scared of it.
That evening we went back to the Taj Mahal for sunset, but since it was pretty cloudy there wasn’t much of a sunset, so we just sat and stared at it for about an hour, trying to soak it all in. Afterward we headed to the train station with our boxed dinners from the hotel to take a two hour train ride back to Delhi. Our guide told us to save the food we didn’t eat because we could find someone to give it to at the train station. No one could have prepared us for the experience we were about to have. The second we walked into the station we saw about a hundred homeless people sleeping on the floor. Most of them had no shoes and looked like they were on the verge of dying from starvation. They all just stared at us as about 50 white people, well fed, well dressed, with shoes stepping over them to get to our train platform. This was probably the turning point of my experience in India. Tessa saw a man with Elephantitis in his feet and I think she is scarred for life. As I said earlier, I was pretty nervous about Indian food so I had bought a lot of snacks on the ship to bring around with me. After making past all of the homeless people, we got to our platform and were 30 minutes early for our train. It took only minutes before we were getting tapped by little kids putting their little hands to their mouths with the saddest, most desperate looks on their faces, begging for food. This little boy came up to Tessa as she was sipping her Coke and said in the saddest, softest little voice “Pepsi! I like Pepsi! I like Pepsi!” so she gave him her Coke. After about five minutes I felt so incredibly guilty having the snacks I had bought on the ship, knowing these kids are starving, so I pulled out my cereal and gave it up. All I could think about is Mother Teresa and how un- Christian it was to not share my food. Once we gave it to them the little kids would run off because if they were caught by the big kids they would take it from them. I will never complain about food again without thinking of those starving little kids in the train station.
We arrived back in Delhi and the next day we had a last tour of Old Delhi and a few last monuments, like the Gandhi Memorial. For the sake of not making this much longer, we went to the airport that evening to find our flight was delayed, and finally made it back to the ship around 10. The last day in Chennai Tessa, Jess and I took our first auto rickshaw ride into town. We all held hands for the first five minutes and said a little prayer for our lives. I had read an article in the Hindu Times on the plane that had talked about 15 people having been killed this year alone from getting hit by buses while riding in rickshaws and on foot. Driving in India is absolutely ridiculous. No traffic laws are followed except the occasional traffic light. There were thick white lines that said “Stop” in the middle of roads but no one stopped, so I’m not sure the point of them. We told the driver to take us to the mall that was recommended to us and the second we got out of the rickshaw another driver came up to me and said “Oh madam, Spencer’s Mall closed, something happened inside, I take you to better place.” I knew this was another crazy scam so we walked past him. Every store was like a game to see how good of a bargain we could get. Overall, India was a great experience. I saw many sad things that have made me realize what I take for granted every day like clean drinking water, food, shoes, a clean place to go to the bathroom, and a clean place to live, to name a few. I have never seen so much poverty and despair, but I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. It wasn’t one of the more glamorous ports of call but I learned so much about myself and how grateful I should be for the opportunities I am given everyday just to live a healthy and happy life. If everyone could experience India, even for a day, I think people would find they have far less to complain about than they really thought.