India is a different world. In an incomplete list, it was beautiful, sad, touching, dirty, heartbreaking, and unforgettable. I think it’s impossible to go to India and not come back a changed person. There are images I can’t get out of my head and moments I hope I never forget. It was an overload for my senses and I was overwhelmed for parts of it. I saw incredible things that took my breath away. I am so glad I did what I did and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything, but by the end of our trip, I was glad to be done.  There are parts I would love to see again and places where I would love to spend more time but for now, I am perfectly content to make India a one-time destination. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world and I’m so grateful for everything that I’ve seen and done so far so thank you to everyone who helped me get here! In most of the other ports, I fell in love immediately with them, but I loved India in a different way. Let me explain.

We started in Chennai in the South of India on the 5th. Chennai is an extremely dirty and polluted city (all of India was incredible polluted but Chennai was the worst in my opinion). I wore a white shirt the first day (not smart) and by the first half of the day during which I had spent a significant amount of time indoors, the shirt had turned black. When you came in and washed your hands and face the sink was black. I can’t even imagine what my lungs must look like now after breathing all that. They even kept all the doors on the ship to the decks closed because the air was so polluted. The streets had their own problems: men would just go to the bathroom whenever they felt like it on a wall, there were piles and piles of garbage lining the streets everywhere, cows and bulls would be rummaging through it, children and adults too. It was really hard to see.

I should explain a little before I go on. For each of our classes, we are required to complete a certain number of faculty directed trips in each port and then usually write up a paper for each. It’s a great opportunity to see things and go places that would usually be impossibly to do on your own. There are school visits and orphanage visits and opportunities to go to places like the Coca-Cola plant and the Nike factory.  So the first day I had scheduled a Working Women’s Forum to learn about microfinance in India and see how it impacts the lives of women there. However it wasn’t until later in the afternoon so we decided to knock some shopping out of the way.

We went to Spencer mall where they had most everything in one place. The main form of transportation in India are auto-rickshaws, which are basically three wheeled motorbikes that have a two-and-a-half foot long bench in the back for you to sit on. We managed to squeeze three girls (hips and all) onto one. The driving in India is a different story completely. There is pretty much only two apparent rules that I could figure out: 1) Cows have the right of way (they are holy in Hinduism) and 2) if there is any sort of spot or opening in the flow of the traffic, fill it. Cows and cars and motorbikes and rickshaws and carts and walkers all trying to get to the same place practically on top of each other, it was crazy. Apparently if you hit someone with your rickshaw it’s no big deal either (true story). It was even crazier than the driving in Morocco. We have a new saying: India makes Morocco look like Spain. We find ourselves quite hilarious. Indian rickshaw drivers are notorious for ripping you off too. You find yourself agreeing to one price in the beginning and then find that the driver is demanding a higher price when you reach the destination or that he tries to make you pay it in American cash (yes, our driver tried to get us to pay $150 each in American cash to him for a 20 minute ride). They also stop at various locations on the way to your destination and make you buy something from their friend’s store or tell you where you want to go is closed and try and take you somewhere else. But they had warned us about all this in pre-port so we had come prepared.

Eventually making it to the plaza, Laura and I bought sarees and wore them the whole day. We got so many compliments on them and even got told a few times that we look Indian! It was really fun and I really wish I could wear it back in the States, I might start a new trend. Not wanting to be late, we were planning on leaving with ample time to get me to my FDP. But then one of the girls we were with decided to go off on her own and make us look for her because we couldn’t leave anyone alone. So by the time we found her we were rushing to find a rickshaw back to the ship. After haggling over price for like 10 minutes and convincing him to take us straight to the ship (this was a particularly ornery driver) he got us on our way… only to drop us off at the wrong quay extremely far from where we needed to be. I am panicking at this point but he wouldn’t take us to where we needed to go and called us cheap after we paid him 50 rupees more than we had originally agreed upon, driving away and leaving us with no idea how to get back. This nice bicycle rickshaw driver came over to us and offered to take us to our quay. Well at this point I’m with Jordan and Laura and none of us are tiny and the bike rickshaws are half the size of the auto rickshaws. Somehow, piled on top of each other with all our bags, we miraculously managed to all get on it. The driver was about 6” shorter than me and 1/3 the size and I was one of the smaller of our group just to give you an idea what this poor guy was up against. He started pedaling away at an embarrassingly slow speed, I knew I wasn’t going to make it at this point. So we sat back and “enjoyed” the ride. We were practically sitting in a flower planter box (the auto-rickshaws at least had a covering) right up next to all the traffic whizzing by us. I’m pretty sure we all thought we were going to die at some point or another. Everyone we passed laughed at the spectacle. At one point Jordan had to get off and help the driver push us up a hill in the middle of the street. Epic. Laura and I were laughing so hard, it was the funniest thing I have ever seen. My bus passed us as we pulled into the gate but I didn’t even mind anymore. We paid him three times the amount we had given the auto-rickshaw driver just because he worked so hard. We were all dripping sweat by the end of that little jaunt.

We went to wash off the sweat and dirt and grime and to come up with a plan for the rest of the day. After some lunch, Sean Jordan and I went to St. Thomas Basilica, one of only three churches in the world to be built over the remains of an apostle of Jesus Christ. The other two are St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and Santiago de Compostela Cathedral (St. James Cathedral) in Galicia, Spain. It was an amazing experience. The church is more renowned for it’s significance than it’s aesthetic qualities but it was still very cool to see. We spent the rest of the day sightseeing around Chennai and shopping (I was forced) and then going to a lovely dinner. I’m not a big fan of Indian food but the food I tried there was really good. The interesting thing though was that I was the only woman in that restaurant, literally the only female. And it didn’t even matter, it was like I didn’t exist. The waiters wouldn’t listen to me when I ordered so the boys had to repeat my order and when the food did come, the boys were brought out first and it was almost 15 minutes before they brought out mine. It was very weird. So after dinner we headed back to the ship to pack. I wore my saree all day :)

We had to leave at 4 the next morning to catch our flight to Delhi. That morning went by in a blur, we were all so tired and we took another flight to Varanasi as soon as we got to Delhi. It was a long day. But as soon as we got into Varanasi they took us to a silk factory and we got to learn and watch how they hand-weave the silks on machines that they have been using for over 200 years. And then they let us loose to buy these beautiful, incredible hand-made silks… I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We came out to all these children waiting by the bus who asked for chocolate and pens, but no one had any. They really wanted to take pictures with us too so we got a couple good ones. After we all loaded ourselves and our newly acquired packages onto the buses they took us to the middle of the city where there were 70 rickshaws (the bicycle ones) waiting for all of us. Sean and I found our driver and our entourage took off. I don’t think Varanasi had ever seen such sights. 140 American students parading in a long line of rickshaws through the city; quite the picture eh? So we trekked down to the banks of the Ganga, the holy river Ganges to witness the evening prayer ceremonies. It was a very special thing to see. There were women and children everywhere selling little candle and flower baskets. You are supposed to light the candle and float it down the Ganga for luck so I lit one for both my parents, it was a very special experience. We were all exhausted by the end of the night so back at the hotel everyone passed out pretty quickly.

The next morning we got to wake up very early and go back down to the Ganges to take a boat ride down it at dawn and watch the sunrise and the people bathing in it, a ritual that has continued for many years. We also saw the cremation sites with shrouded bodies waiting for their turn to return to ashes and be given to the Ganga. It was incredible. It was beautiful. It held some sort of captive draw. The boat ride  was one of my favorite experiences of the voyage. After it was over we took a walking tour through Varanasi and then headed to Sarnath, an ancient city where the Buddha preached his first sermon. It is called the birthplace of Buddhism and there is a temple and garden dedicated to the Buddha. We took off for our flight back to Delhi late that afternoon and only had time to drive by the Gate of India, a huge stone gate tower that was erected after WWII, and visit a magnificent temple that lit up under the night sky, took my breath away. Our hotel that night was awesome, lines with shops and a club and a swank restaurant, we all stayed up far too late despite being dead on our feet. It was really fun though.

The next morning was another early wake-up call to for a train to Agra. The train station was an experience in itself. There were homeless people sleeping everywhere and the dirt was everywhere. We all stood for 45 minutes waiting for the train cause no one wanted to sit or put their bags down. On the train, we pretty much took up our own whole car so everyone passed out. I was expecting Agra to be a lot more developed and clean since it was the main tourist attraction site in India, but it was just as dirty as Varanasi. We spent the morning at Fatehpur Sikri, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built in the 14th century by the Mughal emperor Akbar. The only remaining structure of the ancient city is the fort built by the emperor. It was an amazing structure and really neat to tour. I was just super anxious to get to the Taj Mahal though, I have wanted to visit there for so long! First they took us though to this carpet factory where we got to learn about how they hand-wove the carpets, some made of pure silk. They were beautiful and intricate and I would have bought one if the cheapest one wasn’t $250USD!!! It baffles me that they would take a bunch of college students to a place that sold carpets up to $20,000USD and expect us to buy. Then they made us go to lunch. I just wanted to get to the Taj! Finally, after what seemed like forever, we made it. It was the most beautiful, incredible thing I have ever seen. There aren’t words to describe it, it is the single greatest act of love by man on this earth. It looked fake it was so amazing. I could have spent an entire day there, it was so magical. I would love to go back there one day just to be near its splendor again. It was funny too, all these people were coming up to us asking to take pictures with us! We felt like celebrities. It was funny though, of course we made the most of it. That was a full day, a beautiful day and I fell right asleep again on the train ride back to Delhi. I even fell asleep in all my clothes on my bed when we got to the room.

We flew back to Chennai the next morning and got some last minute shopping done before heading back to the ship, showering and falling right asleep again. The next day we had no classes either, it’s a designated rest day after India. I feel like there was so much to this trip in paticular that writing wouldn't do it justice. So even though this was the biggest port to me, in terms of difference and change and growth, this is one of the shorter blogs because I just can't capture it in writing. India is something you must experience for yourself so I leave you to one day make that discovery if you so chose. All in all it was an amazing experience, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. I feel so grateful for my own life and for the things I’ve seen. This is such an incredible journey.

Love to you all,
Ally