Delhi and Agra, India

We had to meet in the ship’s union the second day to leave for our trip to the Taj Mahal! The airport in Chennai was incredibly old and low-tech, tiny and ALL on the ground level, which was extremely different than any airport I had ever seen before. What this meant is that you took these shuttle buses from the gate, to the planes where you walked on. It wasn’t that the planes were tiny, it was just that the airport was. The most interesting part of the whole airport/security experience is that there was a separate line for males and females, and girls walked through a metal detector, but it was off and we were just checked with one of the wand detectors behind a curtain. It was different. There was also always just one line for females at all the other security areas we went to throughout the trip versus at least two for males. I have learned that while traveling, I like to have the window seat (don’t worry Lorrie just while traveling to new places) because you can see some incredible views, especially through India where we were never high above the clouds. We took off and landed twice due to a stop in Bangalore. When we finally arrived in Delhi, we headed right to our beautiful hotel, where we once again had to go through security, and then had a whole greeting ceremony inside with a drink, bindi being placed on our forehead and we got flower leis! There was a pretty little sign as well that said welcome SAS. It was so nice. We then quickly had a delicious Indian food buffet lunch and then went to tour around Delhi.

We went to both Old and New Delhi, which is beautiful in some parts and incredibly impoverished in others. We went through it all on a bus, and consequently sat through a ton of traffic, but it allowed us to see a lot of sights and people. One area that we passed through was filled with construction sites and lots of people living on them. Children were hanging out on the side of the roads wearing next to nothing, but waving and smiling as they watched us pass by. It seemed that no one was immune to waving at us- including the children playing in the road, the construction workers, or even people driving in cars (we almost saw a few people crash due to staring at us and not looking in front of them). In contrast to the poorer areas we saw lots of beautiful monuments and temples surrounded by green parks. The first stop on our tour was the Gandhi Museum, which is where Gandhi spent his last days and was eventually shot. It was amazing to see and incredibly interesting. There was so much that I didn’t know about Gandhi. There were quotes that he had stated all over the place and my favorite was “My goal is friendship with the world and I can combine the greatest opposition to wrong. I have implicit faith in my mission that, if it succeeds- as it will succeed- history will record it as a movement designed to knit all people in the world together, not as hostile to one another but as parts of one whole.” We took a picture stop at the Baha’i House of Worship, the residences of a bunch of different government officials, and finally toured a Sikh Temple.

The Sikh Temple was beautiful, but also served a really great and interesting purpose. Sikhs have to pay 5% of their income to the temple, so that they can provide food for the community. They have this large hall that serves as a huge kitchen. However, the food is not provided as a means of charity, but rather is available for people of all religions to eat together in peace. Inside the temple, there was a service being conducted in the center of the room, and people were scattered all around it sitting on the floor and either meditating or just watching.

I was talking to my mom that night and when she asked “how is India?” I responded, “I am in love.” She said “with who?” to which I laughed and said “India!” I said that I am in love with the people, the culture, the food, the colors, the smiles, the cities, etc. And that was just the second day.

We had a lovely 5:15 wake-up call the next day so that we could take an early three hour train to Agra. The whole station was packed with Indian families and tourists just like us. The first train that stopped in front of us had a smell leaving it that immediately hit you in the face, had bars over the windows rather than glass, and had people just literally jumping on and off of it before it came to a stop. We weren’t on that one. Our train was basically like an old train with the tray tables and everything. The views through the countryside were once again amazing. I did my best to sleep as little as possible as we went through slums, villages, wealthier areas, farms, etc. When we got off the train my disastrous breakfast box encounter happened (see older post for details) and then went to our hotel where we were once again greeted in a great ceremony similar to the last hotels but there was music being played this time.

We went to some store that our tour guide gets kickbacks for where they did a whole demonstration on how to make cashmere and silk rugs and then tried to sell a bunch of traveling college students things that cost over 1000 dollars. It was a bit of a joke. We went back to the hotel for lunch afterwards and then left for the Taj Mahal! We were shockingly not met by a ton of beggars at the Agra Fort, our first stop before the Taj. Agra Fort was a mixture of a battle fort, a jail, a mosque, and a palace. There were beautiful gardens and the architecture of it was amazing. There was also an amazing view of the Taj far off in the distance from the top of it. A little bit later, we got back on the bus to finally go to the Taj Mahal. After going through security, you have to walk through these big solid gates that are blocking the view so right as you walk through them its just THERE. There were a lot of beautiful gardens, ponds, and marble platforms in front of it that we spent a lot of time by taking pictures. There were workers running around with whistles yelling at some of the tourists trying to fill up their water bottles in the fountains. We saw the inside of the Taj Mahal, but apparently missed the things that you are supposed to see (like the precious stones) since our tour guide had told us nothing. That was pretty upsetting to find out afterwards. There were people on other trips that didn’t even get time to go inside though so at least we did. Also unfortunately, we stayed long enough to see the sun slightly set but left about 15 minutes before the sky would have lit up in such a way that the colors of the Taj change.

The next morning we had an amazing breakfast before driving to the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri. It was a huge architecturally beautiful area filled with pretty gardens and the whole place just seemed to go on forever. My friend and I spent some time speaking with a man and his grandsons who took some pictures with us and then gave us their address so that we could send them. It was cute. About 15 minutes before we had to leave, two of the other SAS groups arrived there… there were over 170 SASers there- total chaos! Afterwards our whole group was talking about how happy we were that our group was tiny and people got along because we all were hearing from our friends about how disastrous their trips were.

That afternoon was an incredible one. We started off gong to Mother Theresa’s Ashram, an incredible orphanage. I spent the majority of our very short period of time there with children with disabilities. They were all incredible and I had such an amazing time with them. I have never seen such smiling and excited children in my life. After that, since my friend and I were the only two people left in there we decided to go find our group, who were in a section of the orphanage that had the most adorable tiny babies and toddlers I have ever seen. I spent most of my time with this one little boy, who I later sent a picture of to my mom asking if she knew anyone who was looking to adopt. He received a snack at one point and after taking a bite immediately took a piece to give to me. I have the most amazing picture of him offering me his food. I sat with this little boy and his friend who were hilarious with each other (I plan on using my internet time and uploading pictures of them later) until an older girl tapped me and told me that my group was gone. I sadly said goodbye to all the kids and ran to catch up with my group, but not before this other little boy took his juice box and wouldn’t let me leave until I “took a sip” of it. Luckily, I have a lot of practice pretending to eat and drink fake food/drinks so it wasn’t a problem. The thing that I most took out of this visit is that if these children that I met can appreciate everything that they have with the smiles on their faces and be the most amazing, bright children offering us their snacks, then we have a lot that we can learn from them.

A bunch of people wanted to go shopping afterwards so we went to this cute little area of Agra to check out some stores. It was difficult to do after the orphanage. We then went to dinner at a Pizza Hut, which in India is a nice sit down Italian restaurant and was delicious. Since we couldn’t finish all of our food, a few of us went out with our leftover pizza to try to find these two children that we had seen asking for food earlier. We walked around for about 20 minutes trying to find them but we couldn’t and that was sad. We noticed this apartment complex as we were walking, where these little boys were playing cricket in the yard and the girls were sitting around outside. We waved to them and one older boy came over to talk to us with his little baby brother. Eventually, after talking to the boy for a while, they decided that they trusted us enough to let us inside the gate to where they were playing cricket (it was a private residence). So, we played cricket with them for a while and the girls watching were laughing at how bad one of my friends was at it (he was used to playing baseball was his excuse). It was so much fun and we were sad when we had to get back on the bus. We had a long train ride back to Delhi that night but we had fun on it. When we got back late to the hotel everyone immediately ran to their rooms to shower and then go out in the few clubs inside the hotel. Indian nightlife is basically non-existent, so the bars and clubs that people go to are in hotels and they were filled with strictly tourists.

The next morning, we were able to get a late wake-up call before flying to Cochin. The flight was fine, some people were extremely sick on it because of some sort of food poisoning or they drank the water from the sink or some other sort of causation for an intestinal problem so that was interesting. I felt really bad. Tons of people are sick still (days after leaving India) because of something that they ate or drank. I just got lucky I guess. We arrived in the Cochin airport at around 4:30. As we entered the terminal and the city in general, it was very clear that this was India’s resort-esque city. I was reminded a lot of Mexico actually. It took us an hour and a half to get to the port, where we then had to wait to go through customs for over an hour. By the time we got to the ship and got through security it was 7:45! Definitely a very, very long day.

More to come soon about my time in Cochin…