The first day we arrived in Chennai, Laura Flynn, Brad, Josh, Dan and I rode into town to grab some lunch and do some quick shopping before we all headed in our separate directions. It’s funny how in these countries you can go to the ATM, pull out a hundred bucks, and actually have thousands in local currency. I get overwhelmed sometimes! Anyway, back on track. Everything in this country is so cheap. I swear I am going to be the best Santa that ever lived when I get home. The boys left the shop with some interesting outfits – they all bought tunics and Indian pants to go along with them.
However, they weren’t the only ones, and when I got back to the ship to depart for my 4 day trip to the Taj Mahal and Varanasi, many of my other guy friends had the full ensemble – turbans of some sort, tunics, pashminas, pants, and Indian shoes. They wore them everywhere! One of my friends Chris even said that while we were laughing at him, he noticed a lot of “Indian chicks checking him out”…nice. Anyway, we went to lunch and I had my new favorite food – naan. I’m sure it’s common in the states, but I had never had it before coming to India and it is up there with my top five foods. I mean, up there with sushi and cheese, and that’s pretty high. Naan is this amazingly wonderful buttered flatbread that is warm and delicious and if you haven’t tried it, do so immediately. I think it’s what sustained me this whole trip. That, and my constant diet of Pepto Bismal, because everyone was insanely worried about getting traveler’s diarrhea from the food. Contrary to what most people think, not all Indian food is curry. Surprising, huh? There’s actually lots of good chicken dishes, lamb, potatoes, rice, etc. Yumminess.So after our amazing lunch we raced back to the boat because I was late, per usual, for my trip departure. I made it, thank God, and I was off on what were some of the most interesting, exhausting, exhilarating days of my life. The first night we flew from Chennai to Delhi, checked into our hotel late and hopped into bed because our 4:30am wake up did not sound too appealing.
The next morning Christine, my roommate, and I were of course the last people on the bus because I woke up at 4:45am, exactly when we were supposed to be on the bus, awesome. We drove to the train station to get on the train that would take us to Agra for the day.
On the way I saw probably hundreds of people sleeping the filthy streets, with either little or no blankets to cover them. Not that being cold was a problem – India was HOT – but still. There were infants, pregnant mothers, deformed children, and the elderly all lying somewhere along the road trying to shield themselves from the lights and awful stench of cow manure and pee that haunted the streets. I swear I have never seen a dirtier country in my life. In the train station I was continually plagued with sights of children and no limbs, extremely malnourished, or with some awful disease like elephantiasis.
They would pull on our clothes pleading for something to eat, not even money, just food. They were grateful even to have water. Finally the train came and I passed out for the two-hour ride to Agra.Once we arrived, we got on a bus and drove another hour or so to Fatehpur Sikri, the abandoned city built by Emperor Akbar, the third Moghul emperor of India. The entire palace complex, which served as the capital of India for twelve years, was made out of red sandstone, and was gigantic!
There were beautiful gardens, pools, fountains, multi-level housing complexes, and many open courtyards where the emperor, his three wives and his hundreds of concubines used to live. Emperor Akbar built the city in honor of a Muslim saint who had prophesized that after years and years of only having girls, that he would finally have a son. When that came true, he built the palace in this saint’s honor.
After being accosted by hawkers and frustratingly annoying salespeople, one of whom decided that he liked my ring and demanded that I give it to him, we got back into the bus and headed out for lunch and then to Agra Fort.
It was here that I had my first view of the fabled Taj Mahal. The fort was built earlier than the Taj, but by the same emperor, in order to protect the Moghul kingdom from invasion. This emperor, Emperor Shah Jahan, after the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the Taj Mahal was built, was overthrown by his own son, imprisoned in the fort, and died after 8 years of captivity there. Sadly his plans for an even more glorious black Taj Mahal across the river from the one he did build were thwarted because of his son. Frustrating. A black one would have been so cool. After waiting the entire day to see the Taj, we left the fort and geared up the see the monument we had all been waiting for.How do I describe this? I looked like I walked into a postcard. Or better yet – one of those awesome pictures you see in National Geographic or on Google image search. It honestly did not look real.
After tons and tons and tons of pictures, we walked down the long reflecting pool, getting closer to the marble wonder. Again, contrary to belief, the Taj is not a temple, but rather a mausoleum for Mumtaz, Shah Jahan’s wife. He created this perfectly symmetrical, marble building as a testament to the permanence of their love, and after hundreds of years it’s still standing, so it looks like she was one awesome wife. Luckily the sun was going down as we were on our visit, and we got to see the building with the sunset as a backdrop, it truly was amazing. When you get up to the upper level of the Taj you have to either remove your shoes (seemed to me to be a common theme in India – no one wears shoes! It’s the most bizarre thing), or put on some super-sweet booties. Needless to say, I opted for the booties. Brad and I snaked through the long line to enter, and finally got to see the marble-encased caskets of the Emperor and his beloved inside.
The marble detailing was so incredible and intricate that I have no doubt the decades it took to construct this building were spent hard at work. After lots more pictures and awe-struck facial expressions, we boarded the buses again to get dinner and get back on the train for trip back to Delhi.
The day was exhausting and everywhere I went I was being hawked by vendors and beggars right and left. There were dirty, deathly skinny animals at every turn (another weird thing about India – the cows are sacred, and everywhere, even in the middle of the road, but they do not look to be treated so nicely. Not so fat these heifers), tons of trash lining the streets, people relieving themselves out in the open, and malnourished children tugging at my sleeve, and my heartstrings, hoping to survive another day off my discarded food. At that point, I really didn’t know what to think at all.We got to sleep in the next morning…till 5:30am. Awesome. For those of you who know my morning patterns, let’s just put it this way, I am not a morning person. But after this trip I have no doubt that I will be able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, in any position, and be perfectly content. I’m quite certain I got 12 hours of sleep for 5 whole days. So we got up early, drove to the airport and caught a flight to Varanasi, the holy city of the Hindus. On the way from the airport to the actual city, we stopped at Sarnath, the site where Buddha preached his first sermon after achieving enlightenment.
This ancient city, now in ruins except for the giant stupa (which supposedly hold’s some of the Buddha’s possessions), is as holy to Buddhists as Varanasi is to the Hindus. Along with the Buddha’s birthplace and death place, Sarnath is one of the three places that Buddhists make pilgrimages to during their lifetime.
We left Sarnath, boarded what I felt was my new home, our bus, and drove a while to Varanasi. After settling into the hotel we left for our nighttime activity: seeing the holy rituals performed on the banks of the Ganges River. For Hindus, Mother Ganga is worshipped as a goddess who has to power to cleanse a person of their sins and hopefully relieve the dead from the cycle of rebirth so central to the Hindu faith. Every evening at dusk hundreds of people gather on the banks of the river to partake in an hour-long ritual ceremony complete with Brahmin priests waving around incense, beating drums, and lighting things on fire. It was an awesome thing to watch. It was just like going to church for them.
To and from the river we went two-by-two, very Noah’s Ark style, in rickshaws pulled by tiny Indian men. Our rickshaw driver, Michael (no joke), explained to us how he had two wives, and that he only had to pay 100 rupees for each of them – that amounts to 2 dollars a wife. Absurd isn’t it? A member of the lowest Indian caste, Michael was a sudra, those whose traditional duty it is to serve the other three castes. He was extremely poor, very thin, and could not afford a home for his wives and three children so he had to live with his parents and his brother and his brother’s family as well. He explained that he already had three children, all girls, but that he was going to wait until he had at least a few boys to stop having children.
For poor Indians large families are their source of income, of security. Children mean revenue – for the farmers, they can help with daily chores, or can become laborers for other farmers and earn money, for the urban poor children mean more people to beg, or to work menial jobs for some source of income. It is also common that children in some families will die because of malnutrition, so families compensate by having more. This is why India is so overpopulated, or so I learned in my Globalization and Development class. People aren’t poor because they have large families; they have large families because they’re poor. Interesting, I think. Our guide throughout the trip, Harsh Sawhney, attempted to explain to me why family planning doesn’t work in India. It’s because a) people aren’t educated about birth control and how it works, so they either refuse to use it, or use it improperly, thus it fails to work, and they spread amongst other women that it doesn’t work; b) women’s husbands refuse to allow it; c) culturally boys are worth more, so couples will have kids until they have multiple boys; d) most women don’t even have access to birth control in the first place; e) it is frowned upon in rural communities because large families are the way of life, the key to survival. All in all, India’s population, which is mostly extremely poor, living on less than one dollar a day, will continue to grow because more children seem to by the key to survival. Okay sorry for the educational side-note, I just think it’s so interesting because the West has common misconceptions about why things are the way they are in India, and I like to find out the truth. Anyway, back to the rickshaw ride. It was so awesome. Everything in India is so colorful! Right down to the saris worn by women and young girls as they walk down the street. It was awesome to pass through a huge outdoor Indian street market at night, see women buying fabrics for their saris, see men bartering for fruits and vegetables, and pass by the not-so-occasional cow sitting in the middle of a busy road.
As we were riding back, my friend Nea, who was with me in the rickshaw, turns to me and goes, “Oh my god, we just got hit by a car!” It was so slight that I hadn’t noticed, but she was definitely right; our rickshaw had gotten tapped by a silver Mercedes. What ensued happened in mere seconds that I can’t really recall all the details, but I just remember a staredown between our driver and the driver of the car, the car pulling off the side of the road, the driver getting out, coming over to our rickshaw and punching our rickshaw driver in the face and knocking him onto the ground! I was petrified because the huge, angry Indian man looked like the rickshaw driver wouldn’t be the only one getting hit, but luckily our driver hopped back onto the bike and pedaled away as fast as he could. I later asked our driver if this kind of street violence was rare, and he said sadly no, people from upper castes treat people from lower castes with absolutely no respect, with no regard for the laws. Poor Michael.Early the next morning, 4:30am early, we got back on the bus to go down to the Ganges for another ceremony. At dawn, all the local Hindus come down to the river to bathe because they believe that the river has the power to cleanse a person of their sins. The water, perhaps the most disgusting water I have ever seen, is a filthy brown color with all types of gross things mixed in.
3 sewage plants from Varanasi pump into the river, all the trash from the banks is swept into the river, and not to mention – there are dead animal and human bodies in there too (I’ll get back to that later). So, it’s nasty and these people submerge themselves in it, wash their whole bodies with it, and drink it. Foul. So anyway, we get to the river before sunrise, board large river canoes and row out into the river to watch the ritual from the water, and see the beautiful sunrise. Actually, perhaps the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen.
We also each bought a small flower candle to light, make a wish with, and set afloat in the river. It was really cool to see a sea of floating flowers going down the banks of the river.
So back to the dead bodies thing. Varanasi is one of the holiest cities to Hindus, and those who are lucky enough, go there to die. They are cremated on giant funeral pyres, and their ashes are spread into the river in hopes that the river will relieve them from the cycle of rebirth. However, only those people with sons are allowed to be cremated because it requires a son to perform the last rites. Therefore, pregnant women, infants, children, or anyone without a son who wants to free themselves from the karmic cycle is simply dumped into the river. This was perhaps one of the most disturbing parts of the trip for me because as we approached the bank to get off the boat, the body of a toddler boy, probably no more than 3, floated dangerously close to our boat.
I had so many physical and emotional reactions to that scene that it’s hard to describe. Even now when I think about it, I gag. Everyone was pretty shaken up afterwards, and the winding walk through markets and small alleyways was spent in a pretty solemn silence. We boarded the buses to start our long day home of two flights, multiple bus rides, long lines, and finally sleep. Back in Delhi, before boarding our flight to Varanasi, we took a small city tour, seeing all the embassies, the Presidential Palace, the Parliament, and then a Sikh temple. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Before entering the temple we had to enter a small room where we removed our shoes – not something I was exactly thrilled about in India. As we entered the beautiful gold-domed building, the sound of chants and drumming grew louder. As we approached the alter, men and women were prostrating themselves to the Holy Scriptures (the basis of their religion, there is no god). Sikh temples are open daily from 5:00am to 10:00pm because the full book of scriptures must be read from beginning to end every day, and that is how long it takes to do so. We visited the temple around sundown, which was gorgeous.
Outside the temple was a large reflecting pool with white-stone buildings around it. Men and women, all with their heads covered (I had to cover mine, too), we walking around, washing themselves in the pool, and blessing themselves with the holy water.
Afterward, we left the temple, boarded the buses, and started the long journey back to the ship.We arrived at the ship around 2am, so I was not thrilled when my alarm sounded at 6am the next morning…FDP time. I put on my conservative clothing (pants) and prepared to walk out into the smelly sauna that is India. We arrived at the Sri Sayee Vivekananda Vidyalaya School, a secondary school that serves the poor communities of Chennai, is built entirely upon donations, and provides very cheap, but well-rounded educations to children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to learn. The second we stepped inside and a little girl in a pink dress handed me a rose, my smile did not disappear once from my face. It was by far the best experience I had in India. These little kids were so cute and funny, interested and curious, wanting to learn about America, taking pictures with us, giving us gifts. I have never been so overwhelmed with unprompted kindness and generosity, especially from those that come from so little. The school itself could have used some work, but since it runs totally on donations, sacrifices must be made. Overall there are 690 students, ranging in age from 3 to 18. My interesting experience started with the lower kindergarten classroom, mostly three-year-olds, who did not speak at all, let alone a word of English. Getting them to understand why we were there and what we trying to do with our mounds of play dough and hundreds of crayons was interesting, but as we moved up in age amongst the classrooms, the students understood more and our efforts were fully validated.
My friend Kelly and I taught the students the Hokey Pokey, the US national anthem, the Macarena, head, shoulders, knees, and toes, and essentially anything from our childhoods we could remember. The Hokey Pokey was a HUGE hit! They in turn shared some of what they knew with us – karate, gymnastics, nursery rhymes in Hindi, songs, etc. Every time a little 5-year-old Hindi girl sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider to me in broken English, my grin just widened. It’s hard to explain how this experience changed my whole view about India, but it did. It was so eye opening in so many ways, and it made me think about all we have to be thankful for as Americans, and what we can do to help other peoples around the world. So, that being said, I am canvassing for donations for the school, really of any kind. If you decide that you want to donate, and any amount is greatly appreciated, please write me an email and I will give you more information about the school, the children, how to donate, etc. If you would like to send school supplies I will give information on how to do that as well. It really is a wonderful program and every little bit, every small donation helps to send another child to school, to give another child a future.
So all in all I wouldn’t really say India was fun, I’d say it was a great cultural experience. Going into it I sort of assumed it would be like that, but I was unprepared for how I would be changed in the end. So this was kind of a sappy one, but I guess it had to come from India…now onto Malaysia tomorrow! Temples, and beaches, and jungle…can’t wait!
