India

October 23, 2009:

The morning we ported in Chennai, India was one of the first times I didn’t get up early to watch the boat pull in, and that may have been for the better. The industrial port in Chennai was not the cleanest, nor did it have the bluest skies. With a trip leaving at 2:30 I decided it was better to stay on the boat, rather than feeling rushed during my first few moments in India. After lunch on the boat I took a quick walk out on deck, curious about how the poor air quality would really feel while breathing. Next, last minute packing, and preparations for our trip!

When I finally got out to the busses, there was only space left on a converted trolley car. The novelty was fun, for about 3 minutes, at which point the ride started to become long and hot. As we drove through Chennai to the airport, I got my first glimpse of India. The streets were overrun with vehicles of every sort, driving with little regard for one other… with the exception of the horn. Drivers took care to use their horns, loudly and frequently, to convey a variety of emotions and expressions. After arriving at the airport we breezed through security, where they didn’t seem to care about liquids at all which was very bizarre. Soon enough we had boarded our plane and were on our way to Delhi, India.

From the Delhi airport we continued to Hotel Ashok where we would stay for the next night as well. The hotel was so entirely huge, and very nice. We were greeted by women who gave us necklaces made of natural beads (nuts or seeds) and marked our foreheads with the traditional red dot. We went to our rooms, which were so far from what I was expecting with the flat screen TV, wood floors and nice beds! Then we headed downstairs for dinner, our first meal in India. I was pleasantly surprised once again, the dinner buffet had so many different choices, and nearly everything was vegetarian. Although I did have to be careful about uncooked foods and ice/water, being a vegetarian was easier in India than in the United States since many Hindus are vegetarians. Throughout the trip, my favorite foods were paneer (a delicious cheese and flavorfully spiced sauce dish), doughnut-like fried dessert and the delicious bread naan. At dinner there was a five person band playing for us on a knee-high stage, but they played seated the entire time. After dinner we went to one of the hotel bars, but decided to go back to our room instead of going to the nightclub with some of the others from our trip.

October 24, 2009:

The next morning we were woken up at 4:15 for our busy day of travel. We convened in the lobby, boarded the busses and left for the train station. The train was one of the first times I really realized, “We’re in India.” People were asleep in large groups with lots of baggage all over the outdoor areas of the station. There were young children who were beggars, although this experience was not the worst we would have at a train station. Soon enough our train arrived and we boarded the Shatabdi Express for Agra.

Driving through Agra was much different than our drives earlier through Chennai and Delhi. Agra was much smaller, and the people were going about their lives right before our eyes. We saw the sacred cows doing as they pleased beside, and sometimes in, the road. There were many families walking around and small children that were so cute. Our first stop of the day was Fatehpur Sikri, a large expansive compound of built by Emperor Akbar as his capital. Red sandstone palaces filled the historical city that was constructed by Mughal emperor Akbar beginning in 1570. The surviving palace and mosque are a tourist attraction and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Fatehpur Sikri was abandoned in 1585. The reasons for this remain obscure; it is possible that water sources dried up.

Then we left for Agra where we had lunch at Hotel Mansingh hotel where we had another delicious meal of Indian food. After lunch we shopped in the lobby of the hotel. In one of the shops we found shirts that said “Welcome Semester at Sea” with a picture of the Taj Mahal, which was a necessary novelty purchase. We also popped into a fabulous scarf store where I purchased a few luxurious silk scarves.

Next we continued on to Agra Fort, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The fort, also known as Lal Qila, Fort Rouge and the Red Fort of Agra, has seventy foot tall walls. It is a walled city that surrounded the palace of great Mughal rulers. We were told it is the most important fort in India, and used to contain the largest state treasury and mint. The fort contained the halls and palaces of the Mughals and is at least as old as 1080 C.E. when it was first mentioned. One of the best parts of Agra Fort was the view of the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort’s sister monument only 2.5 km away, which we would be seeing next.

Next we went to the Taj Mahal! The 17th century mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his Queen Mumtaz Mahal. It is known as the best example of Mughal architecture and is truly a grand building. It is also a UNESCO site and one of the man-made world wonders. To get to the main mausoleum we walked through the Great Gate, which was a beautiful structure on its own. The Taj Mahal is sandwiched between two buildings, the Taj Mahal Mosque and its identical twin, a guesthouse. Once we entered the gates, I was shocked at how many Indian people there visiting the Taj Mahal. There were tens of thousands of people, maybe more. After some pictures we walked to the stairs where we removed our shoes and attempted to climb the stairs while hundreds of Indian people attempted to do the same thing, pushing and shoving all the while. After we had reached the main staircase to the Taj, the “line” we were in got even less civilized. After some careful maneuvering, we reached the bottom of the stairs, but were separated as we merged into the crowd. A few steps up I felt someone’s hand on my back, thinking it was one of my friends, I reached behind to issue a reassuring grasp… but realized this was not a familiar hand, but a wrinkly one. Soon, the hand had migrated and was using my pants as a handle, as the old woman tried to get up the steep stairs with all of the other 1000 people on the staircase. Once we were up on the ground level of the Taj, we took a lap, admiring the views from every angle. I was soon approached by a group of middle school aged boys who wanted lots of pictures with me. They thought blonde hair was just about the strangest thing. Soon a grown man with his child also wanted a picture, shortly followed by a group of mid-20s men, at which point I had to break away from the paparazzi like situation. We decided that we didn’t have enough time to go inside the mausoleum, and spent our last Taj moments snapping pictures as the sun set in Agra, India.

We returned to Hotel Mansingh for dinner, where we experienced more of the customary short power-outages that occurred daily while we were in India. We left the hotel for our train. The train station in Agra was one of the worst situations I encountered in India, and maybe the moment where I was the most painfully aware of the poverty that exists in India. Got to train station, this is when the kids were so bad. Girls fought, men would start shining your shoes if you weren’t careful. At this point my patent leather shoes looked like they really needed it. At one point there were close to twenty beggars preying on our group, and it was one of the worst feelings trying to ignore them. Some of them had disabilities, which we learned were sometimes inflicted by the bosses of their gangs to encourage feelings of pity and money as a result. At one point, two of the young girls got into a fight. They were hitting and scratching, until one girl bit the top of her younger friend’s head, at which point the younger girl started crying. The tour guide and the train station security were soon there addressing the problem. Thankfully the train arrived not long after the fight. We got back on train and I did the traveling no-no, I plugged in my iPod. With earbuds in and a scarf wrapped around my head to close out the light, I finally fell asleep. Upon our return to Delhi we returned to Hotel Ashok and went to bed.

October 25, 2009:

The next morning we got to sleep in a bit longer, until 6:00AM and had breakfast at the hotel. We left the hotel with all of our bags for a tour of Delhi before our flight to Varanasi, the holiest city in all of India for the Hindus. On our tour we visited the Birla Temple, also called Laxminarayan Temple, which was built in 1622 in honor of the goddess of wealth Laxmi and also Vishnu, one of the three main gods of Hindu. I enjoyed looking at all of the shrines and paintings, and wandering around the bright yellow and red building. Next we went on a drive down the main strip of Delhi along Rajpath, meaning King’s Road, where we saw the War Memorial, Parliament House, Secretariat buildings and the official residence of the President of India. These grand buildings looked much like the large buildings you would see in any capital, another time where it was hard to remember that we were in India.

During our flight I looked out the window and saw an expansive mountain range. Curious, I asked the flight attendant who, like most Indians, spoke very good English. Then he told me that those were the Himalayas in Nepal, which is very close to where we were in India at the time. I thought that was so cool being able to see such a foreign faraway seeming place.
After we arrived in Varanasi we checked into Hotel Radisson Varanasi. Driving through Varanasi was much more along the lines of what I had expected of India, in contrast to the big city feel of Delhi. We had lunch in the hotel, more delicious Indian food, then had free time to get settled and nap if we wanted to. We decided to have cocktails in the lobby before heading out to a trip to the Indian Art Emporium where silk ties and scarves, rugs, woven wall hangings and customized clothes could be purchased. I picked out some of the most beautiful silk scarves.

Next we had a rickshaw through the main drag of Varanasi. Casey and I barely fit in the back of the rickshaw and easily doubled the weight of the poor Indian man who had to drag us around. Traffic was really crazy and at some points I just had to close my eyes. We took the rickshaw to the top of a large set of stairs that led down to the Ganges River, a holy river for the Hindus. We had arrived at the Dasaswamedh Ghat, a platform overlooking the Ganges just in time to see the Ganga Aarti, a simultaneous ritual performance by a number of priests on individual platforms and the lighting and release of small tea light set upon flowers into the Ganges. The priests light wicks and incense and perform a long ritual to express humility and gratitude to the gods.

After the ceremony was over we returned to the spot where we left our rickshaws. It was hard to differentiate between our rickshaw and the 100s of other male Indian rickshaw drivers, but eventually he found us! He was really a powerhouse of a rickshaw driver and we ended up passing nearly everyone and returning to the bus very quickly. Even though I’m not sure he spoke much English, I think Casey and I communicated well how good of a time we were having! Unfortunately one of the girls in our group got lost coming back from the ghat, and we were stuck in limbo wondering what had happened to her while we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally she called our guide from the hotel, her rickshaw driver had gotten lost and the only address she could find was that of the hotel. We then were able to return to the hotel where we had another nice Indian meal.

After dinner we appreciated the dance floor the hotel had set up for us, although we were hard pressed to find any new songs. We danced to a lot of Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Michael Jackson. However, at 11:00PM the hotel insisted the music must stop, as well as the jumping up and down on the dance floor, as we were disturbing other guests. We headed upstairs for a small hotel get together, and eventually headed to bed in the wee hours of the morning.

October 26, 2009:

The next morning we had another 4:00AM wake up call, but this time it was to go see the Ganges River at sunrise. We left in the busses to the Ganges River where we boarded two boats and sailed up and down the river as the sun rose over the opposite river bank. During this time, many people were approaching the banks of the Ganges to do their morning bathing, light more of the floating votives and attend or perform cremation ceremonies. As the holiest Hindu site, to be cremated on the banks of, or floating down, the Ganges is of the highest significance. We learned that the poorer people who cannot afford the cremation ceremony sometimes just swim into the Ganges and let the river take them. We saw a few people swimming but I hope they were just enjoying their morning bath. Our guide warned us that we should not take pictures of that portion of the ride, and sure enough we passed a few cremations. We also saw part of dead body floating down the river, which was unpleasant and haunting. The Ganges is considered so holy that a vial of the river water is kept in every household and a trip to bathe in the Ganges is part of every devout Hindu’s life, they even drink a mixture of Ganges water, urine and lemon juice at the Hindu wedding ceremony for good health and wealth!

After we left the Ganges, we went back to the hotel for breakfast. Then we packed our stuff and boarded the busses for our tour of Varanasi. Known as “The Heart Beat of India” it is recognized as the oldest living city in the world at an age of over 2500 years. Then we drove to Sarnath, where the ruins lie of the city where the Buddha preached his first sermon. We visited the ancient monastery and a new Buddhist temple, as well as a museum with many of the artifacts excavated from the ruins of the ancient city.

We continued to the airport, where we were served lunch. Getting back to the boat in Chennai ended up being quite the ordeal, with our flight to Delhi delayed past the departure of our flight to Chennai. Luckily they held the plane, which makes since with 70+ passengers missing. We boarded the second plane finally and I had my last try at getting to a million dollars on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game on the headset TV screen every airplane seat was outfitted with. That evening we returned to the boat and went to sleep, feeling overwhelmed from the long full days of traveling.

October 27, 2009:

The next morning was spent shopping. We got up and had an autorickshaw driver take us to Spencer’s market, where we could spend the rest of our Indian Rupies and pick up some Indian treasures. We shopped for a while but headed back to the ship after not too long. Riding in the autorickshaw was especially funny with four of us crammed into the backseat of an original Mini-sized vehicle.

India was an amazing place to visit, but a completely overwhelming experience. The intense poverty that I encountered, though only in glances, deeply saddened me. The infrastructure was poor and the traffic bad, but the underlying pace of India in the world’s economy is quick. India is quickly coming up to challenge other world powers, especially China for production and manufacturing. I found that throughout the time in India my opinion was everchanging. It was although the idea of India was elusive, and I wanted to pin India down, but then I would see it in a different way that would change my idea of the country. I loved India it its own way, and learned a lot about the world there. The things I saw in India, the Taj and Varanasi in particular, were so amazing to witness in person.

Stephanie@Sea

“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad” -George Bernard Shaw