Unlike anything that I have ever experienced

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India was unlike anything that I have ever experienced. The first thing that I noticed when we pulled into Chennai was how humid it was, and the stench that was so bad everywhere that you felt like you could taste it. The first day I was unable to explore the city of Chennai because I had to leave for my trip to Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi at one, and it was not worth it to try to get all the way to downtown and back in such a short time, so I just met up with the giant group of us that were on the trip (47 in total) and we headed out to our bus which took us to the airport. The two-hour flight was not too bad. They actually served us dinner on the plane, which was pretty interesting but actually pretty good. Once we got to Delhi we had to take a 2 hour bus ride to Agra, and this was actually kind of interesting because I figured we’d just get on a highway for a long time, but I don’t think that India really has any highways after this experience because we drove through what looked like slums for the entire two hours. The middle lanes of the road were paved, but the sides were all just dirt, and we kind of just weaved our way through traffic. Many of the little shacks that lined the road had one little light bulb and they were selling either food or some random products like electronics and stuff like that. After a while we made a stop to get food and drinks from a little convenience store that we saw, but we didn’t pull off the road. We just stopped in the middle, and cars and rickshaws just went around us. It was a pretty weird experience, but actually pretty interesting. We all just went to bed once we got to our hotel because we had to get up early the next morning to go to the Taj Mahal. We got up and they served us breakfast at the hotel and then we walked out to the bus and got on. Once we got on though, the next thing we know there is an elephant walking down the ally that our hotel is on, and there are two little kids that are riding it! That was pretty cool to see in the middle of a city…but we made our way to the Taj Mahal after stopping at an ATM which took forever what with 47 kids all getting money out (that was the bad part about traveling with such a big group…everything we did was a big process in order to move the herd). But we finally made it to the Taj, and it was absolutely unbelievable! It almost seemed unreal how big and beautiful it was. It almost looked like a picture or a painting from far away, and I had to go touch it to really believe that I was there. There were tons of tourists there, and absolutely everybody was taking pictures non-stop. It was interesting seeing all of the Indian people that were totally decked out in the whole traditional Indian garb, especially the women because many of them had very bright colored saris (which are like shawls) that covered almost there entire bodies. It seems like it is a very different lifestyle for women there, and they almost seem non-existent in society. All of my interaction with the locals was with Indian men, and I saw women being treated very differently because it seemed like they did a lot of hard labor that would normally be a mans job. For example I saw this frail looking woman picking up these big pieces of stone and putting them in a rock crusher to make cement or something like that, while about 5 men sat around and watched her…I thought that was really odd! Also the relationship between men that are friends is very different there. They were constantly touching their friends to show their friendship. Men casually walked around holding each others hands, putting there arms around each other, and just being what I would consider to be uncomfortably close. . But anyway after we left the Taj Mahal we went back to the hotel and had lunch, and then went to the Agra Fort. This was a really cool old fort that was surrounded by a moat and had massive brick walls surrounding it, and it also had an awesome view of the Taj Mahal. There were also tons of monkeys running around all over the place, and they would run across the top of the brick walls, which reminded me of the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. We got a great view of the sunset from there and then headed back to the bus to make our way to dinner. Getting back on the bus was always funny at these tourist places because there was always tons of beggars and hawkers that would try to get money from you or sell you something, and I felt like I was in The Beatles the way that I was walking through this crowd, having to push my way onto the bus! Then when you got on the bus they would keep trying to get you to buy something by banging on the windows or even trying to open the windows and stick their product through. We made it out of there and got to the restaurant which just had a buffet of the popular Indian foods which was apparently rice, a yellow curry paste type potato dish, and a chicken dish in a chile type sauce. It was pretty good, and after this we headed to the train to catch the overnight train to Varanasi. Apparently every train is at least a half hour late in India, so we had to wait at the station for a while, but we all boarded (most of us in the same car) and just had a few drinks and talked before going to bed on our little cots that were stacked 3 high. It was funny when the train pulled up because the lower class cars were at the front of the train and they only had bars for windows and they were packed with locals and looked really dirty inside, but we were in first class which wasn’t bad at all, and quite the relief. Unfortunately a few girls had their purses stolen in the night, but I was lucky to have put my things under the beds, and nothing of mine got taken. Anyway we made it into Varanasi and got picked up by like 7 vans that were going to drive us around all day. Unfortunately we all had to pack into these things with our bags on our laps for the most part, and very poor A/C, so we all sweated profusely for most of the day. But we got to see some pretty cool temples but didn’t really get to hear a lot about them because our drivers didn’t know very much English, and we didn’t have a guide that day. It was still interesting though, and when we got to the Ganges River we actually had some random 16 year old Indian boy offer to take us on a boat tour down the river. This was the coolest part of the day because this kid actually knew about all the temples that line the sacred river, and we got to see where they burn the dead people in order to throw there ashes into the river. Oh ya, I forgot to tell about the river…it was pretty disgusting because first of all the water was brown, but also there was tons of trash floating in it, and this is also where they throw all of the ashes of people that die, as well as the bodies of the poorer residents and all of the animals! The weird part about the whole ordeal was that there were little kids playing around in the river, and people were bathing in it right next to where some cows were standing in the water, probably doing what cows do best…I guess that its just a part of their life, and holiness is more important than cleanliness. After that we went to some silk factory where we got to see how they make all the silk cloth, and after this we made our way to the train again to make our way to Delhi. This time all of our seats weren’t together so Michael and I ended up sitting in a car surrounded by a bunch of Indian men. We played cards for a while, and it was funny because every time we looked up these guys were staring directly at us, but they wouldn’t even look away when we looked up, they would just look right back at us. It was weird, but funny. In the morning we got to Delhi and went to our hotel, but we didn’t really have anything planned so everybody split up into small groups and just did our own thing. One kid in our group had arranged to meet up with his friend that had been living and working in India for the past 4 months, so me and a few others had him take us around the city for the day. He had never actually been in Delhi, but had heard of all the best places to visit, and he knew the best ways to get around the cities. Anyway we went and got some food first at a local restaurant where we all got the Indian style pancake called a Dosa (they stuff some flat bread type dough with different things like cheese and potatoes and stuff like that). After that we went to the Red Fort which was similar to the Fort in Agra, but it had a museum and some other cool things to see as well. Next we went to the biggest Muslim Mosque in India which was really cool because they were all just getting finished doing there prayers when we got there, and there was also a giant tower that we got to go up into that overlooked the entire city. After that we took rickshaws over to the main Market, which was quite the experience. Those guys are crazy and they weave all over the road in and out of cars, the cows, horses, camels, and other animals that are all over the cities, and half the time just pull into traffic and hope that everybody else avoids them. It is pretty crazy driving through the absolutely uncontrolled traffic in India, especially in one of those little rickshaws. We wandered through the market for a while and then made our way back to the hotel for dinner. After dinner a bunch of people tried to go out to the hookah bars, but they were all really expensive to get into, so a lot of us just hung out at the hotel for most of the night and ended up sitting on the roof/terrace of our hotel until it was time to go catch our flight at 5 am. I caught up on sleep on the way to the airport and during the flight, but when we got back into Chennai we had a hard time finding a taxi that knew how to get back to the ship, so our ride back ended up taking like an hour and then they actually dropped us off like 2 miles from where we really needed to be. So we all piled into rickshaws that knew where to go, and I ended up sitting in the front of one by the driver, so that was pretty exciting…But since it was the last day in port I wanted to go check out Chennai, so I just threw my bags in my room and me and one of my friends headed out to get some lunch and do some exploring. We got a bike rickshaw out to the street, where all of the motorized rickshaws surrounded us and forced this biker to let us go with them. My friend Johnny recognized one of the drivers (Kumar) and so we had him take us around for the rest of the day. After he brought us to a little buffet restaurant that was really good, he brought us around to a couple of his friends stores which were all way overpriced compared to the markets. After the stores he brought us to a few temples including one that was on the beach right by the ocean. These temples were all pretty cool, but weren’t nearly as impressive as the ones that we saw in Varanasi. Anyway we left the last temple at about 4:40, and had to be on the ship at 6:00, but we were about 30 minutes from the ship, so we were in a rush to get back so we wouldn’t get in trouble for being late. But there was this massive political rally going on and there were literally thousands of men in the streets all wearing bright yellow t-shirts and holding signs of this fat guy that they were supporting. So good ole’Kumar tried to get us around them, but he could only get us to within about 2 or 3 miles of the ship. So we get out and pay him, but he got mad because he wanted more money despite the fact that we had been telling him that we had very little money all day. Every time we told him that he would just say that it didn’t matter and that he was just being nice, but I guess he figured we were loaded, which we really weren’t at all. So we kind of apologized and told him that we couldn’t argue over this cause we now had like 40 minutes to get back to the ship and didn’t really know exactly where we were. So anyway we took off running through the middle of this rally and headed back towards the ship, not 100% sure where we were going, but we could see a landmark near the ship, and so we just headed for that. We ended up making it back to the ship with 10 minutes to spare, but it was pretty scary having to run back like that! Anyway…that was basically my experience in India. Sorry that it was so long, but if you made it this far thanks for reading and I hope you now have some idea of how crazy India is.

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