India Part 1 - It's Finally Here!

It’s been a while since I’ve written; I hope you didn’t forget about me!  I just finished my trip in India and it was absolutely eye opening!  For those who don’t know, there are over 20 official languages in India and that’s just a small sample of the diversity there.  The fact that Indian democracy still thrives is amazing.  India is every bit as diverse (ethnically, culturally, politically, and economically) as Europe is, except that India is one country and doesn’t have as much money to meet the needs of more people.

Once I left the MV Explorer, I travelled with a Semester at Sea trip to the cities of Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi.  Off the ship, we were hit by a wave of heat and humidity.  Southern India, which is where our dock was in the city of Kochi, is just above the equator.  It felt like the end of July in Kentucky.  My group rode buses to the airport in Kochi and then we flew north to the capital of India which is called New Delhi. 

The city of Delhi has been added to multiple times because it’s been the capital of many Indian Empires over the centuries.  There are a lot of large government buildings in India now that were either constructed by the Indians since independence in 1947, or by the British while India was a colony.  Some of the architecture is truly stunning.  The presidential palace is somehow a mix of the Taj Mahal and the US Capitol Building.  Plus, there is the India Gate celebrating independence, which basically looks like the Arc de Triomph, but without the traffic.  India certainly has a flair for the monumental, but in a country of 1.2 billion people I’m not too surprised.

The first night in Delhi I walked with one of my friends to an ATM so she could withdraw some money for our sightseeing the next day.  On the way to the ATM we saw one homeless man with a cane, and he was the first of many homeless that we saw in India.  In the public areas where tourists go there were usually several children who came up to us asking for money or trying to sell us things, but according to one of my guides, the children usually don’t need much help (partially because some kids have caretakers who take money from them after the day anyway).  If you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire, then give it a try because as dramatic as it is, the conditions and experiences of the kids in that movie are all based in facts.

The real poor in many cases are the people who sit on the side of walkways with a container set out for money or those who were disabled.  From what I could tell, a lot of those people had disabilities that prevented them from working (including one man with swollen feet who wheeled around on a tricycle asking for money), which is a problem in India because the national government doesn’t provide a very large safety net (one state, Kerala, does have a comprehensive safety net).  After taking some time to think about India, the poverty is overwhelming. It literally makes my stomach turn when I think of the physical deformities some people had, or the obvious lack of nutrition some of the beggars showed on their bodies.  That first man in Delhi was just one of millions…

The next day, I woke up bright and early at 4:30 AM.  We all ate a quick breakfast and left with the group to catch a train to the city of Agra.  While I was on the train, instead of serving coffee to passengers, they served tea.  Call me simple, but that was the first time I’ve made decent tasting tea on my own (could’ve had something to do with the amount of sugar I used).  Agra is south of Delhi and is home to several monuments because it also served as the ancient capital of the Mughal Dynasty in India.  First, we visited a palace complex called Fatephur Sikri about 20 miles out of Agra.  The palace was separated into different courtyards and it had several gardens.  One building was really cool because the ruler of the Mughals would sit on a throne in the middle of the room.  Then, four advisers with differing opinions would approach on four walkways and defend their ideas.

The next monument we visited in Agra was the Agra Fort.  It’s made out of red sandstone which is common in north India; another fort in Delhi is made from the same stone.  The fort is gigantic, and even after exploring for over an hour I still hadn’t seen every part of it.  There were also lots monkeys running around the fort, and a baby monkey tried to steal my camera.  If you’re ever near wild monkeys…make sure you don’t get too close!  You’ll either lose something or get chased like Stephen and I were at the Taj Mahal (especially don’t get close to a male monkey while it’s watching its mate and infant, might not have been the best idea).

After Agra Fort, our SAS trip visited the Taj.  Pictures don’t really do the complex justice. I for one always thought the Taj Mahal was in the country side by the pictures I’ve seen, but you’re still in the middle of Agra, just completely walled off from the city.  It is built by the Mughal leader Shah Jahan as a burial place for his wife Mumtaz Mahal for those who didn’t know.  There are a couple mosques flanking the Taj Mahal, and a courtyard the size of a football field that you walk through before you even reach the main courtyard.  The place is really huge!  All the other buildings are built with red sandstone and marble, only the Taj Mahal is made entirely of marble and inlay.

            After we visited the Taj Mahal (and were mobbed by girls trying to sell us snow globes) we rode the train back to Delhi and headed to our hotel rooms for some much needed sleep. I met one of the voyagers named Anna, who actually lives right down the hall from me.  We talked about some things we missed from home, her big issue being the lack of sushi in the world (luckily we’re headed to Japan).  Leaving the train station, our tour guide had told us we could save the dinner they served on the train and give it away to someone who asked (we had already eaten).  I’m not sure why our tour guide was different, but every other SAS trip had been told not to give away anything.  That was fine by me though because I know how a child will use food, I couldn’t know how the money I’d give to a kid would really be used.

Luckily, we got to sleep in until 7:30 AM the next morning and we took a driving tour through Delhi.  One of the stops we made was at Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb.  I’m still amazed by Gandhi’s example. Did you all know he also fought for rights in South Africa for descendants of Indian laborers before returning home to India’s independence movement?  The tomb was a simple courtyard dug into a gently sloped hill.  When you compare it to the Taj Mahal and some of the other Indian burial monuments we saw, it was a great statement about Gandhi’s belief in simplicity.

I may or may not have gotten a little homesick at that point.  You’d be surprised how rare rolling green hills with flowers are in the world.  Gandhi’s tomb reminded me a little bit of Kentucky.  Of course, it could’ve just been the weather, in northern India it was actually spring time!  I got cold one morning because I didn’t pack long sleeves for the trip.

After visiting Ghandi’s tomb we stopped at the Gateway of India, which was built after India gained independence.  From there we headed to the new terminal of the Delhi airport, which was built when India hosted the Commonwealth Games a couple years.  I asked our tour guide if that was a stepping stone to Delhi hosting the Olympics, and he literally laughed.  Apparently the government of India had such a hard time with corruption before the Commonwealth Games that few people want to host an international sporting event again.

Oh, really quick, while we were in India, there were two big things in the news.  First was debate over the sacking of the Minister in charge of Indian Railways.  The entire country’s rail lines are state run, and the company absorbs 20% of the national budget each year.  Unfortunately, with a profit margin that puts them dangerously close to financial trouble and a resulting controversial hike (the only one in 5 years though) India could have some trouble with the company in the future.  That’d be pretty bad considering it carries over 30 million passengers daily and employs 1.36 million people.  The other news is slightly more positive.  The 2011 Indian Census numbers were in and a bunch of good indicators like mobile phone ownership, electricity, and adequate sanitation were way up.  That of course means that India still has dozens of millions of people to bring out of poverty, but things are looking up. 

I’ll post about Varanasi and my last two days in India tomorrow.  The next day I’ll try to post about Singapore before we leave the ship for Vietnam!  I’m a little behind, but I’m trying to make time to get caught up (and slow time down, I’m officially getting closer to home now).  That’s why it’s an adventure, things are happening too quickly…

P.S. The hotels that SAS likes to put us up in are beyond swanky.  They’re downright posh, which is a word that you will see more of when I describe Singapore in a couple days.

P.P.S. Anna had the best quote of this part of the trip.  I’m not sure what we were talking about, but she said, “Most girls cry, but I eat raw fish! I can’t cry!”