India!!!

Hello Everyone!

I am back on the ship from India! I don’t even know where to start to explain my trip. India was the most beautiful, disgusting, life-changing place I have ever been. It was very overwhelming and hard to take everything in on so many aspects….but I guess I will just let the pictures and stories speak for themselves (although they don’t even do the experience justice)…

We spent most of the first day traveling from Chennai (where we ported) to Delhi. We met in the Union (part of the boat), I knew no one on my trip except one guy and our trip leader who is my RD (Resident Director), she is really nice, and I really like her. But by the end of the trip, everyone in our group was very close and I made a lot of good friends, anyway we flew 2 ½ hours from Chennai to Delhi and then drove to our hotel. I took a lot of pictures from the Bus on the way…..



My view from the ship, Indian men watching us arrive.



More people waiting for us to arrive



I didn’t like taking pictures of many of the sad things I saw, but imagine millions of these children in India. You would literally be bombarded if you gave one money, it was terrible.





The first paved road I saw! It was very exciting so I took a picture.













A man fixing his rickshaw

The next day we got up at 4 am to take the train to Agra. After a two hour train ride, we went to a place called Fatehpur Sikri, apparently it is one of the oldest civilizations India. It was pretty cool, and it was our first REAL interaction with Indian people, and it was very uncomfortable. First of all, the people stare at you ALL of the time, there isn’t a minute when someone is not looking at you because you are American. We got used to it after a while. We also learned to say that we were from Australia or Canada to be treated better. Anyway so we got there and we were with our tour guide and he would lead us somewhere and stop and do a little lecture on whatever we were seeing. The whole time these Indian men were harassing us. And by harassing I mean yelling things, taking pictures of us, some woman got touched in inappropriate places, while others got proposed to. It was very uncomfortable. Hundreds of men came up to us and asked us to take pictures with them, “just one miss, please! Please!” and would not leave us alone. At first we played along and took a few pictures, but then more and more people started to aproch us. It was very scary because soon there were HUNDREDS of them. Finally security had to intervene and we had to leave. Here are a few pictures of the first few pictures we took with them before it got bad….


This is a horse, and our guide Raj



These vendors actually climbed onto our bus with us to sell us stuff, it was hilarious.



Fatehpur Sikri



Indian men posing with one of the guys on my trip





Jordan, Holly, Me, and Lindsay





Taking pictures with the Indian men, I am in the green shirt- you can barely see me, and our trip leader and my RD michelle is in the black shirt



and again….





This guy was funny, he insisted that this guy on our trip take on of his trinkets for free and when he finally took it, he said that it wasn’t free, and that he wanted to trade the trinket for his sunglasses. It took a while for the conflict to be resolved haha.



Camel!


A note on Indian culture-
1) Woman are ABSOLUTELY second class citizens, it is a known fact. As American woman we were comepletely not used to standing in different lines because we were woman, being offered higher prices for things because we were woman, or just the way we were treated as sex objects and not as real people. It was really crazy,
2) Men hold hands and cuddle with other men all the time in India. Not because they are gay, but because they value male friendship so highly, woman should not touch each other at all, hug or link arms, or you get mean glares, because females friendships are (of course) not as high of a priority as male friendships. Also Indian men and woman do not hold hands or show any signs of affection in public, and a few times some couples in our groups got very weird looks from people for showing affection in public. You cannot kiss in public at all, because if someone complains you can actually be arrested. India is a completely different world.

The next morning me and about 8 of my friends woke up early (4 am again) to see the sun rise over the Taj Mahal. We took a ricshaw there and learned that we could not get into the actual gates of the Taj Mahal until six, but the guy took us to this garden where we could see the top of the Taj Mahal and the sun rise over it, and that was good enough for us. It was really beautiful and worth getting up for…..



before the sun rose…







This one is my favorite, because you can see the a monkey on the far right if you look hard enough!



wild monkey


Later on went back to the Taj Mahal with our group and went to Agra fort. The Taj Mahal completely took my breath away, it was so beautiful. At first you just see the big red gates and then you turn the corner and you see it and it literally stops you in your tracks, I felt like I was in a movie or a fairy tale, its still really surreal.




The outside gates of the Taj Mahal, you are walking tawards this from the side, and then you turn into the gate and suddenly you seeeeeee…..



THE TAJ MAHAL!







Thanks Mom and Dad!!!





Saying YES to life. (only my mom and dad will understand that one haha)



Up close shot of the Marble and gems on the walls of the Taj Mahal.



Me and the taj





Agra Fort



Agra Fort




Then later that day we went to Mother Tereasa’s Ashram (none of us knew what this was before we got there) and it turns out that it was a place where mother tereasa atually lived and now it is a place for disabled and mentally retarded children, hospice patients and orphans. At first I was very sad, but then playing with the orphans was really fun and we had a good time, I didn’t take any pictures because it didn’t feel right.

The next day we went to Ghandi’s Ashram, which was very different than mother tereasa’s. It was not a home for anyone, but it was turned into a museum for him. He actually lived the last 14 days of his life there, and his bed room was still exactly the way he left it. It was also the place that he was assassinated on the way to his daily prayer meeting. It was very powerful because they had these foot steps that went from his bedroom to where he was assassinated showing his last trip from his room to the prayer hall.







Ghandi’s room

After that, we visited a Sikh Temple, which none of us where expecting would be as cool was it was. We got there and right away we were taken to a room where we had to take off our shoes and put these orange bandannas on our heads, we sent in and sat in on some chanting and prayers, then they took us to this huge kitchen where a mix of poor and rich people were helping to make thousands of pieces of Roti (bread/pancake things, kind of like naan), they all work together to feed the poor, the rich Sikh’s come to donate their time and the poor ones trade off doing it, because everyone is equal under the eyes of god in their religion- very cool. It was really neat to see them mass producing so many roti. Of course the woman had certain jobs though, and could not do what the men where doing. They offered some of us (I was one of the lucky ones!) to help with making the Roti, it was really fun, then they took us to this huge room where hundreds and hundreds of poor men woman and children were eating their roti for free. It was very touching and cool.



Me with my head scarf….



Holly with her headscarf



SAS-ers with their head scarfs on



The kitchen- where they were making Roti for the poor



Roti Flippers





Me learning to make Roti



Some of the poor people that were waiting to get their free Roti- isn’t that little boy so cute?


This is one of our last stops, the Bahai Temple, it is HUGE and in the shape of a gigantic lotus flower.



This is random and funny, but I found this really cool poster at a Market in India (in ENGLISH!) and put it up on my door as a reminder, I love the graphic with the chicken and the sun rise lol. I bought it for less than 5 cents and it was just too cool to pass up haha.




That’s it for now, I hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures. I miss you all sooooo much and I cent wait to get to Egypt in 10 days! This trip is going by so fast, and is changing me so much and I am so happy I am doing this. I will never look at the world in the same way again. And I will never complain about bathrooms in the United States again.