Four Cities in Four Days - India

4 cities + 4 days + 4 flights + 2 trains + 2 rickshaw rides + 2 hotels + countless bus rides = recipe for excitement, enlightenment and most of all...exhaustion!

 

What a crazy 4 days it has been traveling literally all over India. By plane, train, and bus, I think this is the most I have ever traveled in such a short amount of time. I feel like I've become a pro at going through Indian airport security.

 

I've decided to break this blog up into days to hopefully give it some sort of structure. I might not get through all four in one post.....but we shall see!

 

March 7th

 

3:45 AM I am up, dressed, packed and ready to meet my group in Tymitz square. It's an early morning and some people haven't slept but we are all so excited to start our journey. There were supposed to be 10 people in our group but only 8 of them showed up. There is another group of 8 kids doing the same trip as us as well as a group of 16 also doing the same thing. There was an SAS group of 90 kids heading out at the same time we were and we wanted to make sure that we beat them at the port gate so we could get to the airport on time. Then two people in our group went to try and find others so left them behind and they were to meet up with us at the airport. We hopped into a cab for 300 rupees a person, later finding out they ripped us off BIG time. As we drove to the airport there were a few roadblocks, blocking the entire road but our taxi driver just wandered over to the police car and made them open it for us. And the roads have these crazy lights on them that make it look like a futuristic highway. We got to the airport which is pretty funny because it's basically like an indoor/outdoor building. The check-in counters are all outside and the only thing inside are the gates and baggage claim. We checked into Spice Jet Airlines and then went through a series of checkpoints to check our bag of liquids, go through security, and pick up our tickets. We were pretty lost as to how the whole process goes but Spice Jet is really friendly and helped us out a lot! Security is SUPER touchy-feely and they basically grab you everywhere....and men and women go through seperate security lines because the men cannot scan the women. We were there about 2 hours early so had plenty of time to sleep and wander about the airport. It was really dingy and unclean. I decided to try my hand at the bathrooms. I hadn't used a public bathroom until this point. So as I walked in, I saw the squatty potties. Yikes. I really don't know how they do it. And then I spotted the "regular toilet." It said EWC on the door.....not sure what that means but I decided to go for it. I realized that they didnt have toilet paper and I hadn't brought any with me....uh oh. So even though I didnt go for the full out squatty potty experience, I got a little experience by not having TP to use! I came out of the stall and an Indian lady was staring me down. I'm not sure if it's because I'm white, or because I used a regular toilet (possibly there for the handicapped?). I don't know....it was really uncomfortable so I quickly left! When they announced our flight we got to the gate, they scanned our ticket, and then we hopped on a bus. This ended up being a common occurence in all the airports we went to. They take you on a bus to the airplane where they rip off the stub and you walk up some stairs into the plane. So that was different! A lot of times the bus rides were literally 30 seconds long. Spice Jet gives you a free water bottle on every flight. This ended up being really nice and saved us from buying water in every city. Security is pretty lax too and they let you bring on opened bottles of water that you got from outside the airport. So we left the city of Chennai behind and landed in Delhi. We had a six hour layover there. It went by fast since we had to find our tour guide, eat lunch, get our tickets and go through security again.

 

Our next flight took us to Varanasi. We found our tour guide....it was just like in movies where they hold up a sign for you. Ours read "Semester on Sea." We loaded up the vans and hopped inside. Ours had an astroturf floor inside....it was quite interesting. The ride was crazy with traffic. At one point this HUGE public bus jammed full of people was coming straight at us. It was passing another car and swerved around it, tilting off its center of balance. It was really scary. I saw some kids working in the fields too. Child labor is a major problem in India and is ignored by many people as we later learned. In some ways, the rural part of Varanasi that we were in reminded me of Ghana. There were many shacks, dirt and trash. We got to our hotel, New Temple Town, where there was some sort of problem with fitting all three groups into the hotel. At one point we thought our group of 8 would have to sleep all together. It was all worked out in the end. We then got into some bicycle rickshaws which took us to the Ganges River for sunset. Barely two of us could fit into each rickshaw and it's so funny because we saw family's of four on these things. Our driver was coughing the whole way, while also avoiding cars, motorcyclists, cows, dogs, people, goats and autorickshaws that were literally coming at us in all directions. There were thousands of people everywhere and we were in the middle of rushhour traffic. It was really neat to have this local experience. Rickshaws are a common mode of transportation for locals and very cheap. It's pretty funny to watch them drive because even though there are lanes, they are not used. Cars have signal lights but they arent used. Instead they blast their horns every chance they get. We called them "Horn happy." As we drove through the traffic there was loud music playing in the streets.

 

We finally got out and continued walking toward the river. We passed this huge caouldron which is there for people to put money into for the homeless. If you donate, it is good karma. We saw a marriage going on as well. These are public spectacles in which anyone can join in and walk to the marriage center. You never know how many people will be at your wedding! We made our way to the Ganges Riverfront. Here there is a nightly ceremony that many people attend. Honestly I cant remember exaclty what it is about. They use seven elements of earth during the ceremony...some of which are air, fire, and water. It was a verylong ceremony and we had a birds eye view of it from atop a building. People were watching the ceremony from boats in the water as well. And then the craziest thing happened. As we know...the cow is sacred in the hindu religion. Basically what this means is the cows are literally free to roam anywhere. So as this ceremony is going on, this cow wanders into these group of local people who get very scared and scatter everywhere. No one does anything about the cow and lets it mosy on over to the pile of trash to find something to eat. It was a very funny sight! After the ceremony we walked back through the streets passing many begging children, handicapped persons and beggars. It was sad to see and many of the kids were asking us for food. We didnt have any to give. We ended up walking to this restaurant which was a whole in the wall. We would never have found it without our tour guide. Our guide told us he takes us there because no one ever gets sick and it's so true! It was the best Indian food EVER. We ordered some naan bread which is amazing. We wanted plain, buttered, cheese and garlic naan and the waiter thought we were crazy but we ate it all! YUM! We also had rice, green curry, spicy sauces, and mango pickles. These palette cleanser seeds were given to us with our check and we all ate a huge amount of food for around $5 each. We went back to the hotel in the bicycle rickshaws. We were excited to see our room had a shower, toilet, TP, and TV! I stayed in a room with a girl Ali who is super cool! We had to be ready to go by 5AM the next morning so we quickly went to bed. Of course....both our alarms didnt go off the next morning so it was a little bit stressful!

 

March 8th

 

5:00 AM

 

We met in the hotel lobby and got into vans which took us to the Ganges River again. The Ganges River is a holy place where the bodies of the dead are burned and their ashes are placed into the river. Our group of 8 got into a boat. It was really cold, dark, and windy outside. A boy about the age of 14 rowed our boat. We went all along the riverside looking at the buildings. Many prominent people own the buildings along the river, though they don't look like much. We also saw a mint green colored building where our tour guide was born and raised. As the sun began to get closer to the horizon, it got lighter and many people could be seen splashing themselves with the holy water from the Ganges. It's basically like a daily baptism and removing of sins. People were also washing their clothes along the river. We saw school children who were learning tradional hindu practices. They were doing yoga as well. These school children belong to the class in India's long-standing caste system which would allow them to become priests later in life.

 

We made our way to the part of the riverside where bodies were being burned. It takes a very long time, as the fire has to be hot enough. Children under the age of 14 years of age are not burned, but instead bound to stones and placed into the river. Next we made our way to a riverside Buddhist temple. There were many kids pestering us to buy things from them. We were told never to buy from the children, as the money is usually never going to them. When we got to the temple, we removed our shoes and walked inside. A white dot of paint was placed on our forehead between the eyes to cool the mind and makes you not able to be angry. This was a Kama Sutra temple and had many intricate and explicit carvings. It's intersting that India is so reserved yet Kama Sutra originated here. We then had a city orientation where we wandered through many back alleys and "holy streets" of Varanasi. We passed many children going to school. There was trash, poop, and urine everywhere. Again, there were cows in these very tiny alleyways and we had to pass them which was kind of scary. We made our way to this temple where we could see a building with a solid gold cupula. It was so cool! The security to get into this temple was very tight and security feels you up so much. When we exited the temple, we were given Chai tea (Masala) in clay cups. It was the best Chai I have ever had and I am obsessed with it now! We got to keep the clay cups too! Next, we continued walking through the streets. As we began to round a street corner, I could hear yelling that sounded like panick. Then our tour guide jumped to one side as a cow and two bulls literally rounded the corner and almost ran into us. It was so scary and it felt like we had just participated in The Running of the Bulls in Spain. It was INTENSE!

 

We visited many temples that day including a monkey temple! There were wild monkeys everywhere! Orange paint was placed on our forehead here. Not sure why...We then went to the University. It has over 30,000 students and emplys 2,000 faculty. (Hopefully those numbers are right...) It is a huge campus. We went to a temple there which was made of marble. It was very relaxing and felt cool inside. It was a great place to sit, relax, and meditate. It also had many scriptures on the walls which were interesting to read. We made our way back to the hotel for breakfast around 10AM where we ate chocolate cereal, fruit, beans, and some kind of delicious bread. Indian food is my kind of breakfast!

After breakfast we went to yet another temple. It had prayer flags which were really neat. Following this was the archaeology museum and also the silk factory. We were able to see the workers making silk scarves and bedding. The workers, work for 9 hours a day and make about 13 cm of progress per day. Lot's of work goes into the silk! After this we headed back to the airport where we flew back to Delhi. We got into our van, which this time was driven by a man with a turban and had black light mood lighting inside with hardwood floors. Quite the ride! Delhi is much different from Varanasi. Very city like, updated, and still very dirty. We stayed at Rockwell Plaza. It was so exciting to see that in the lobby there was a free computer to use with internet!!! Of course I hopped on to facebook for a while! The rooms were nice minus the bathroom which was basically a single room with a sink, toilet, and shower that had no bathtub so the water just went all over the place. The best part though was the bed which was super comfy and i got a great nights sleep. We had to wake up the next morning at 5 to catch our train to the Taj Mahal in Agra!

 

 

To be continued...