World Blog: India

Hello everyone, sorry it has been so long. I still haven’t gotten a chance to get pictures from South Africa up, and now I have India pictures as well (there wasn’t much internet available in India). Hopefully in Thailand I will have access to some wifi somewhere.

Anyway, India was very interesting, expensive (in total, I bought a lot of stuff, plus plane tickets), and really dirty.

The first day, we arrived in Chennai, which is a port city on the Southeast side of India. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Chennai is 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So, needless to say, it was extremely hot. In addition, Chennai is the most polluted city in India, which is extremely polluted as a whole, so it was dirty, as well. I don’t recommend visiting Chennai. We got off the boat and got in a rickshaw (which in India is a three-wheeled mini car) and asked to be taken to Spencer’s mall - one of the few areas that have “fixed” prices, in an effort to not get ripped off. It took us over an hour to get somewhere that should have only taken about 30 minutes because our rickshaw driver kept taking us to his “friends’” shops and telling us that it was Spencer’s mall, hoping that we would buy stuff there instead. He finally took us to Spencer’s, but we only had a little bit of time before we had to start returning to the boat. The rickshaw driver followed us all around the mall because he wanted to be the one to drive us back to the boat, as well. It was very obvious that he was trying to cheat us. In the mall, we were looking for camera lenses (hoping they would be dirt cheap) because I really want a new lens for my camera. Well, because our driver knew that we were looking for lenses, he made us stop at some more camera shops that “his friends” owned one the way back to the ship, almost making us late. In total, we were only out around Chennai for about 2 and a half hours, but judging from the looks of my clothes, you would think that I just spent a week in the woods without taking a shower or anything. The air is literally disgusting, and it smells horrible everywhere. Most people had masks on just to walk through the town. Another thing is that the traffic is absolutely insane - think of the worst rush hour traffic and multiply that by 99. There is no specific “rush hour” because less the 20% of the work in India is “organized” work (as in a 9-15, regular job), the majority is self-employed stands or odd jobs, if they have any employment at all.

Interesting fact to think about: VERY few people in India own cars, less than 10%. If the same percentage of people in India owned cars as in the US, the effect on global warming would be even more exponential, and with India being one of the BRIC countries, that’s where they are headed.

Anyway, we had to get back to the ship relatively early the first day because I had a trip to go on for my Nonprofit Marketing class. We went to visit an organization called the “Working Women’s Forum,” which is a micro-lending organization that lends small amounts of money to women so that they can start businesses of their own (usually just fruit stands or other small endeavors). We learned all about this organization and got to talk to some of the women and see how they are trained and everything, which was pretty interesting. I have to write a big paper about how they can be improved. Anyway, after that the bus driver dropped some people off at Spencer’s mall, which allowed me to shop without someone following me to every store. I bought some small stuff, a ring and matching pendant, and some scarves, etc. Then we went back to the ship relatively early, because we had a taxi coming to pick us up at 3:30 the next morning for the airport.

The next morning, we got into the taxis and drove about 45 minutes to the airport. You’d be amazed how many people are awake at that hour in India - its seemed like there are just two sets of people, some that come out during the day and others that sleep during the day and come out at night because it was equally as crowded at night as it was during the day. An interesting way to deal with overpopulation. Anyway, our taxi driver completely ripped us off, forcing us to pay WAY more than the agreed upon price once we got there, and we ended up paying $60/car (we had 2 cars because we had 5 people), when we really should only have paid about $7/car. Not good. Our flight to Delhi was only about 2 ½ hours, and went by relatively quickly. There was a man on the plane reading a newspaper that had an article about Semester at Sea students visiting Chennai in it, and Henry asked to see the article. Then we got to talking with the guy about Semester at Sea and everything, and he seemed very interested. His name was Sethu, and he invited us over to his house for dinner that night.

At the airport in Delhi, we went to a travel agency and arranged a hotel for the night and a PREPAID taxi driver to get us there, which worked out very well. The hotel was only about $16/night and wasn’t too bad at all. Once we got checked into the hotel, we took the free taxi service over to another travel agency, where we went to figure out the rest of our trip. We were doing a common tourist “route” known as the “triangle,” which includes 3 cities: Delhi, Agra (where the Taj Mahal is), and Jaipur. Originally, we had planned to take trains between each of these cities (about a 5 hour train ride each), but the trains were already booked. Apparently, you have to book trains well in advance because of how populated India is. It is not uncommon that people ride on the tops of trains and buses when they are sold out. Anyway, the travel agency arranged a driver for us for all 3 days at a TOTAL of $200 (only $40/each…much cheaper than our $120 taxi ride to the airport).

After getting everything settled there, we walked around Delhi for a little while and then ate a snack at a restaurant. The whole time, we were trying to get a hold of Sethu (pronounced Say-too) and figure out where he lived so we could go over there for dinner. We couldn’t get a hold of him, but we had his address so we just got in a cab and gave it too the cab driver. The cab driver couldn’t find it, so he dropped us off at the “Taj Mahal Hotel,” which is the nicest hotel in Delhi. We waited there and had coffee while we tried to get in touch with Sethu. Eventually we did, and he picked us up and drove us to his house.

We pulled up in the driveway, where his Mercedes and two Porches were parked. His house was HUGE and incredible. We went inside and sat in the living room and his wait staff delivered lots of little appetizers. His wife was there too, along with his 4-year old son named Vir (which means ‘brave’ in India). After talking with them for a while, we found out that Sethu is a designer for Louis Vuitton and Coach, and that his wife owns a hotel chain in India. We got a tour of his house - he has a huge collection of art. Later, he had his driver take us home because he and his wife had to go to a Vogue fashion show in Delhi. Back at the hotel, we just all went to sleep.

The next morning, our driver picked us up for our drive to Agra (which was about 4 ½ hours). On the way, we stopped at the “Gate to India” and at some tourist/truck spot for lunch. On the drive, we got to see a lot of rural India and the way the people live. Cows (which are considered very sacred), camels, and mules, and sometimes elephants walk in the streets right along with the cars. Most people farm or sell produce and other items along the side of the street. If was obvious that these people had very little and were very very poor, but they seemed to be getting along just fine. They just live a different sort of life than we do. They seemed much better off than those in poverty that we saw in Africa. We finally got to Agra and went straight to see the Taj Mahal for sunset!!

The Taj was BEAUTIFUL and extremely intricate. It was also very crowded. We had a complimentary tour guide that we picked up on the way that came with our driver (we had no clue that the travel agency organized this for us, but it was very helpful). We learned about how they built the Taj (which is a tomb for a King’s wife), and how they got all of the gemstones in the marble walls. The secret formula for the glue that they used to lock the gemstones in has been unknown except by the descendents of those who built the monument. After leaving the Taj, we went and checked into our hotel (which had a rooftop view of the Taj Mahal for only $20/night). After checking into our hotel, our driver took us to several shops. The first one was a Marble Shop owned the descendents of the builders of the Taj Mahal. They gave us a demonstration and then we went into their store, where they had thousands of beautiful marble masterpieces. Most of them were extremely expensive, up to $50,000 USD. Once they realized we didn’t have the money to buy anything, they took us to another room where they had much cheaper item, such as little coasters and candlestick holders and stuff. I bought two matching coasters for $55 USD each (they are so expensive because of how intricate the work is - one coaster could take 3-10 days and because they have gemstones in them -mine has coral and jade in it). After that, we went to a silk fabric store and I bought some silk fabric so that I could get a dress made in Vietnam. We were starving and finally our driver took us to eat some Indian food at a local restaurant. Then we went back to our hotel and went to bed, and got up at 6:30 am to watch the sunrise of the Taj Mahal. Then we left for our 6 hour car ride to Jaipur.

One the way we stopped at some other palaces and forts and got tours of them. It was extremely hot - about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and these weren’t very enjoyable. And we were all extremely hungry - our driver had very specific places he would take us to each food when we were on our drives.

Jaipur was beautiful. It is located in the foothills of mountains, so has a different topography than Agra and Delhi, which were all flat. The first place we went to is a place called “Monkey Temple.”

This was the weirdest/coolest thing ever. This palace was built hundreds of years ago to the Hindu Money God. Since then, it has been taken over and inhabited by hundreds of monkeys - no joke. We walked around it for a while and watched all of the monkeys. There was also a crew from National Geographic there filming for a series called “Monkey Thieves,” which is all about the monkeys that took over the temple. After that, we went to another palace, and then to downtown Jaipur, where we got to ride elephants through the town, which was cool. Then we went an restaurant for dinner and a dance show. There were two girl dancers who just did a lot of cool spinning stuff, but then danced on top of a board of nails facing upward.

After that, we dropped the other people in our group off at their hotel because they were staying in a hotel that night and flying out of Jaipur in the morning - we had to drive back to Delhi because that’s where our flight left from the next morning (it was much cheaper to do a round trip to and from Delhi). So Henry, our driver and I left at around 11 pm for our 5 hour drive to Delhi, and we got dropped off directly at the airport and flew back to Chennai.

Overall, India was much different than what we had been used to so far in the counties because they are much poorer, and it is a much less westernized country. It was very intense and a great experience overall.

I still haven’t been able to get to an internet café to get pictures up, but I will try really hard to in Vietnam.