India

India is a place that I cannot explain in words. India was shocking. I was in awe the whole entire time I was there. India is probably the place that I have gone so far that is least like the Western culture. The roads were incredible. Not only did they have cars that went on it along with other motorized vehicles, but they had motorcycles, bicycles, hand pushed carts, horse pulled carts, these little taxis like cars they used for taxis, plus people walking and cows roaming the streets. If I were to drive there I would probably kill a ton of things in the process. On the side of the streets were piles and piles of garbage. They have no garbage system so garbage was everywhere. People would pull down their pants and urinate on the sides of the streets. Guys would especially urinate on the walls. The water was absolutely disgusting. I would say the water was made of 50% bodily functions (especially poop), 30% garbage, and 20% water. It looked and smelled absolutely horrible.

Despite the grossness the country is full of people who are amazing. The culture and lives they live is something I don’t think any Westerner could do. There is like 1 billion people living in a space of land that is 1/3 the size of the US.

During India I was able to go to both Southern India and Northern India, both very different because of the languages spoken and religions they practice. I went on a trip called Dehli/Agra/Taj Mahal. We flew from Chennai to Dehli and then spent the night in this amazing hotel. It was probably a 4 or 5 star hotel that had numerous different restaurants and shops in it. Then the next morning we woke up extremely early and caught a train to Agra. The train was an experience all in itself. There were two different seating area. A “first class” and “second class” to create words for them. The “second class” seating was insane. Numerous Indian people who were commuting for work would jump on and off this section. It was also extremely packed. The “first class” section was where we sat and to compare it to the United States, it was probably similar to the worst seats on a plane. It was dirty and there were bugs everywhere. Little cockroaches roamed everywhere and I wasn’t aware of them until the end after I had woken up. Hopefully I didn’t swallow one in the process. GROSS. Anyways, Agra was probably the city that was the most interesting. There weren’t as many cars and most people walked or rode bicycles. Cows were EVERYWHERE. I don’t think I have seen as many cows as I did in Agra. They pretty much roamed wherever they wanted. The people of India in the villages use cow poop and turn it into pies and use it for medicine and fertilizer, so on the side of the roads there were a ton of dried cow poop created into piles.

That day we went on this “shopping” trip to a rug place that also had other items to buy as well. The rugs were really nice rugs, but I didn’t buy one because I don’t know what I would ever do with one. They were very beautiful. They also had other things to buy, like beautiful cashmere scarves and such. Then we went to our hotel, which was nice. In the lobby they played the theme song from Titanic over and over again, without lyrics. It was a saxophone playing the tune and it became really annoying!

That afternoon we went to a place called Fatehpur Sikri. It was a Red fort made a long time ago by an Emperor. It was all made out of red sandstone. It’s really cool to thing that people could make something like that in the days it was made. It was very beautiful. All of the ceilings were really low though. The door frames were extremely low. It pretty much was the size of me. People here are extremely short compared to the United States.

Then we had dinner at the hotel. Indian food is okay. It’s not really my taste of food. It’s really spicy and on this trip I’ve realized that I like plain foods with not a lot of spices to it. I really like their pita like bread though. It’s really good! They have it at pretty much every meal except for breakfast.

The next day we woke up really early and went to the Agra Fort, which was okay. Everyone was looking forward to the Taj Mahal, which was next, so the Agra Fort was just wasted time for us. We saw a lot of old buildings and forts like this one on the trip so they all run together and seem like the same one. When we were leaving Agra Fort, we got attacked by Indian men and children trying to sell us stuff. Well not attacked, but seemed like it. Right when they saw us they would run up to us and surround us asking us to buy all of these items. If you said a word they thought you were interested somewhat, so you couldn’t say anything. You couldn’t even look at them without them getting the wrong idea. It was extremely annoying, especially since they would do it outside the buses too. I think that if they were to make a stand, us tourists would much rather go up to it and see what they are selling. They don’t realize that we were completely turned off by them swarming us.

Then we went to the Taj Mahal. We had to walk up this huge street where more people swarmed us. We had to walk down not talking or looking at pretty much anything, which took away from the experience. If we looked at someone or something then we were followed the whole way. When we got to the gate they were very protective. You couldn’t take any bags or anything in with you. In India they have so many terrorists that like to bomb things similar to the Taj Mahal. Just two days before we got to India there were attacks in Verenasi (spelling is probably not right), which caused people on this trip to not go there by SAS orders. We had to wait in line to go through a metal detector and then be felt down by someone who worked there. They had separate lines for males and females both here and at the airport. The males had two lines and got in in about 2 minutes. We only had one line for females and it took 10 minutes to get through. On top of that people kept on cutting in front of us. Even though all of that bothered me, seeing the Taj Mahal was amazing. When I first saw it I did a little excitement jump that made others around me laugh. I was so excited. It was amazing. Everything within the walls was so symmetrical which was great, considering I’m extremely mathematical. The Taj was beautiful. The white marble was beautiful. We were able to go inside, but had to take our shoes off. The inside was really small. Well smaller then I was expecting. Inside was the tomb of her man who built it and his wife. I am really glad that we saw the Taj.

Next we went back to our hotel for lunch and then we went to Mother Terresa’s Ashram. They really didn’t tell us what to expect before we went there. It ended up being a home for those who were mentally or physically challenged. Everyone was shocked by it and it was good to see. The living conditions were pretty horrible but the people enjoyed seeing us there. Most of them smiled and smiled even larger when people in our group gave them stickers. Next door was an orphanage, which I loved going to. The kids were SO excited to see us and play with us. We played with the older kids, and held the babies and toddlers. One toddler that I picked up out of his crib got the biggest smile on his face because someone was actually paying attention to him. He cried every single time I tried to put him back in the crib. That was extremely hard. It was so great to interact with the kids, and some of them were learning English and were pretty good at it. I started to get really emotional because I knew that once we left, the smiles would become cries and things wouldn’t be great for the workers that night. For those of you that don’t know, my sister Lauren’s boyfriend Brett, his family just adopted a boy from India while I’ve been gone. While I was there all I thought was that this is where he lived and now he lives in a home in the United States. He is such a lucky boy because the difference in living conditions is huge. I’m excited to go home and meet him.

After that we left and took another train back to Dehli. This is where the trip turned from being great to okay. Everyone started to become sick. There were always SAS students in the bathrooms of the trains puking. It ended up that we had to have a doctor come to the hotel in Dehli because there were too many people who were way too sick. After this moment then people were becoming sick left and right; if they weren’t throwing up they had wonderful traveler’s diarrhea.

The next morning I woke up with a horrible stomach ache. But I went on the morning trips because I probably will never be in India ever again. Only about 30 people went out of our group of 69 because too many people were either sick or hung over from the previous night. We drove all around the city and saw all the old English buildings around the city. We also went to the Gandhi museum and saw where Gandhi was killed. That was interesting to see. Then we went to a Sikh temple which was very cool to go in.

After that we took a plane back to Chennai. More and more people were getting sick. I ended up being one of those who was getting worse and worse. When we were sitting in the airport at Dehli, I had a horrible stomach ache and felt lightheaded. On the plane I felt like throwing up but kept it in. I ended up falling asleep somehow and when I woke up I felt even worse. I was having horrible back pains to the point where I was in tears. I couldn’t move without it hurting more. I had to have someone carry my bag off the plane. When I got off I felt like I was going to faint I was so lightheaded. I was shivering too because I felt really cold. Tom, the trip leader, called the ship and told them to have the doctor’s team ready because so many of us were sick.

When I got back to the ship I had to carry my bag up to the 5th deck by myself, which made my back hurt even more and I was sobbing at this point. I went straight to the medical center. They saw me right away. My temperature was 101 and my blood pressure was a little high. They also thought something was wrong with my kidneys because of my back pain. So they put an IV in me and put 3 bags of fluid in me. They also had me pee in a cup to check my kidneys, which were okay. That night was a complete blur to me. I just remember them having trouble putting the IV in me. They had to try like 10 times. I remember shivering because I was so cold. When I left about 3 hours later, my temperature was up to 103 degrees. I was so lightheaded and weak that they had to get a wheelchair and wheel me to a room. They put me in a quarantined room on the third deck, when all I really wanted was to be in my own room. That night was absolutely miserable. I was so sick and the nurses said that I was probably the sickest person they had seen so far on the voyage. I stayed in the quarantined room for 2 days. It was absolutely miserable. I really didn’t talk to anyone and no one could come visit me. I did call my good friends Courtney and Dani so they could get some things for me out of my room that I needed. I just laid in bed doing nothing, and sleeping a lot. The cool thing was they brought me my meals to the room, which was bread and soup. I really couldn’t stomach anything! For the next 4 days, all I ate was bread and crackers. It was all I could stomach. If I tried to eat anything else my stomach ache came back and I felt horrible. All I wanted while I was in quarantine was to be able to be home. I was probably the sickest I have ever been and all I wanted was to be home. I had Courtney get me a calling card so I could call my mom because that’s really what I wanted. But now I am feeling much better. I have my appetite back (even though it’s been like 8-9 days of eating close to nothing).

The last day in India I was supposed to go on an FDP for my Religion class to see a bunch of temples in two cities nearby, but of course I couldn’t go on it. Overall India was great, but being sick absolutely sucked more then anything.