India

After being in Asia for a month, we finally went to the country that was by far the most different of any place I have ever been. India is a lot of things that are pretty bad: dirty, poor, overpopulated, and chaotic, but it’s still a great place and going there was one of the best things I’ve ever experienced.

Before going on SAS, I saw a trip (not offered through SAS) on facebook that looked like way too good a deal to pass up. For $690 (including all hotels, flights, and transportation), someone was putting together a trip that would go to Agra, Varanasi, and Delhi, something SAS offers for $1550. I thought I had to do it, especially for that price. As a result, I didn’t travel with the people I normally travel with (except for one, Chris, who I traveled with in Japan for 2 days), but it was still an absolutely awesome trip.

The trip started out by everyone going to the airport in Chennai for our flight to Delhi. This flight was my only flight in India that wasn’t late. In India, almost every flight is late, and they never give you a warning that the flight is late. Instead, they just tell you when the plane is ready for boarding. Anyway, after we landed in Delhi, we had a bus ride to Agra. We left the airport at 9:30 PM for Agra, and there was still traffic all over Delhi. We ended up not even getting to Agra until 3 AM, making it a 4.5 hour trip late at night (we stopped for food for an hour)…..that drive must really suck during the day when the traffic is even worse.

Agra is known for one thing….the Taj Mahal. There isn’t really anything else there (besides the Agra Fort, which was cool), but Agra was still awesome just because of the Taj. It’s an ugly city, but the Taj was just so great, after I saw it, I was already satisfied with my whole India trip. It was even better than I thought it would be.

To get into the Taj, Indians have to pay 10 rupees but foreigners have to pay 750, which is almost $20 USD. India can get away with that though, so I don’t blame them. We went in around 2 PM, just 3 of us, and it was funny because inside the gates, lots of Indians kept wanting to take pictures with us like we were celebrities or something….that was something that had never happened to me on the trip, the only time I saw something else like that was at the Tsingtao Brewery in Qingdao when random Chinese people kept wanting pictures with the girls we were with (but not the guys). The Taj was packed, but there weren’t lots of foreign tourists there, it was almost all Indians. We entered, saw the Taj from a distance, kept walking towards it, kept stopping for pictures on the way (and took lots of pictures with Indians), then we went inside. You can’t take pictures inside, but all that’s inside are a few rooms and a tomb. The Taj Mahal was built in the 1600s by a king for his wife who died, its her burial site. Also, the south, east, and west sides of the Taj are all really nice and green, but the north side is just a river with some cows roaming around. However, it seems like lots of important sites in India are built on rivers.

Agra was the first place I ever saw cows just roam around the streets. And there were a bunch of monkeys just chillin at the Agra Fort. Things like this are the norm in India, I saw cows roam around every city I was in except Chennai (yes, I even saw a few cows roaming through Delhi.)

After our one day in Agra, we went to the train station for our overnight sleeper train to Varanasi. We had the “first class” accommodation, which doesn’t exactly meet American first class standards but is bearable. Most of the people seemed scared of the train, especially after it rolled by and they saw the other sections of the train (which are just tons of people standing on top of each other) first, but I was excited. Not everyone gets to experience an Indian train, especially an overnight one, so I thought it would be cool.

In our car, everyone was assigned to an area, and not everyone was near each other. The train was just a bunch of “beds” to sleep on, there were 3 levels of them, and everyone got sheets and stuff. The sheets came folded, so it looked like they were washed, but at the end of the ride, they just fold up the sheets you use and put them back, so clearly they aren’t washed (not surprising, since India is incredibly unsanitary.) I was able to sleep on the train though for 6 hours, so that wasn’t that bad. I was surrounded by Indian people too in my area, so that was interesting too. It ended up being a 15 hour train ride to Varanasi, so it was only 3 hours longer than it was supposed to be. And the toilet on the train was the most ghetto thing ever, it was just a hole that went to the bottom of the train tracks and there is a sign saying not to use it unless the train is moving. So great. But the train ride was cool just because it was such a different kind of experience.

Anyway, at noon we got to Varanasi. Varanasi is the oldest city in the world, the dirtiest place I’ve ever been, and it’s the most holy of the Hindu holy sites. We had a bus pick us up and take us to the hotel…during this you could tell how bad the traffic in Varanasi is, the bus could barely move. And the streets there clearly aren’t designed for buses, not shocking since the city has been around for over 2500 years.

We had the whole day to ourselves so me and Chris decided to head down to the River Ganges and check out the area down there. The River Ganges is really important to the people in Varanasi and in the Hindu religion. People bathe in the Ganges to cleanse themselves from sin. Also, there is a part of the Ganges where they burn dead bodies (which I’ll explain later.)

We went out into the hectic streets of Varanasi where every guy was trying to give us a ride on a rickshaw (which is a carriage attached to a bicycle.) However, we wanted a tuk tuk (picture at the end) which is automated (so its faster) and really fun to ride (I had already taken them in Agra and Bangkok) so we got one and went down to the Ganges.

On the way down, we really got to experience Varanasi traffic, with the tons of rickshaws, along with motorbikes, tuk tuks, cows, and the occasional car. Agra and Varanasi both have very few cars, less than any place I‘ve ever been, which is a good indicator of the poverty in those two places. Anyway, we got down near the Ganges and then walked around the markets near the Ganges. In this area, there are lots of military guys with guns, they are all over India, more than I’ve seen in any other country (which surprised me, I would expect it more in places like China or Vietnam.) There were military guys with guns right in front of our boat, walking around the hotel….they were pretty common in certain areas. Anyway, after we walked around the markets (of course, cows can be seen all over these, too, just walking right in front of shops), we walked down to the Ganges. When we approached it, there was a staircase with some goats on it, some monkeys right near it, and some cows at the top. These animals really are all over the place, even in the cities. Anyway, at the bottom of the staircase, there were some kids playing India’s most popular sport, cricket, so we watched them for a little bit until we started walking around the Ganges.

We walked around the Ganges for a little bit, then approached the spot where they burn the bodies. In the Hindu religion, if you can afford to, you are supposed to take the dead to Varanasi, burn their body there, and then take the ashes and dump them in the Ganges. By doing this, you are cleansing the person of the sins they committed in their life. Everyone who dies after the age of 13 has sinned according to Hindu religion and is supposed to be burned when they die. The only exception to this are holy men. Holy men, along with people who die under the age of 13, have not sinned and as a result, are not to be burned and when they die, you are supposed to attach a rock to them and dump their body in the river.

At the place where they burn bodies, what they do is cover the body, then they put it on a pile of logs, then they pile some more logs on top of it, then burn it. It’s a pretty intense site. The guy following us said we could go up to the top of a building to see a great view. We were skeptical at first, but then we saw a bunch of tourists at the top of a terrace so we figured we would hit it up. He took us to some hospice right next to the burning site and we went to the top of that to check out the burning. We were first at the second highest level, but the fumes were so bad we had to go up even more. We went to the way top, and we were right above the burning site. There were around 15 or so fires going on with burning bodies (btw, we heard they don’t burn those with diseases, so that was good, because you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near those fumes) and in one of them, we could see legs sticking out of the fire, it was gross.

After that intense site, we left and walked back to where the kids were playing cricket on the Ganges. Then, we walked down even further in that direction, where there was a sketchy market. Random Indian men kept trying to shake our hands, but they were just doing it because then they would try to start massaging your hands and then try to give you a massage. No thanks, my massage from a male in Thailand was more than enough, I wasn’t looking for that to happen again. Anyway, after the sketchy market, we walked back up to the streets, and they were packed. It was chaotic, and the weirdest site we saw was when we saw some huge crowd marching, chanting, and then they were carrying these weird statues that had covered faces. I was really wondering what that was supposed to be (Crowds chanting, marching and playing instruments were common in Varanasi, although I have no idea what the purpose of any of them were.) Then, we found a rickshaw, went to the hotel, had dinner, watched some cricket on TV because that’s what they do in India (and India beat Australia, which was a big deal), and then went to bed early since I was exhausted.

The next day, we all woke up at 5:30 for a sunrise tour of the Ganges. This was really awesome, one of the best parts of my trip. We got in a little boat, all 25 of us, and just went down the Ganges for an hour and a half. I pretty much saw all of the things I saw the day before….people doing laundry, people bathing in the Ganges, the burning site, but it was just cool to see it while floating on the Ganges. Also, we also heard more of those random crowds going to the Ganges banging loud drums and just marching. Also, one really interesting thing about the Ganges is that one side of it is Varanasi, the oldest city in the world, but the other side is nothing. And the Ganges gets really flooded during the monsoon, so when we were there, the other side of the Ganges was just sand, but during the monsoon, that gets covered up, but its still just forest on the other side after the sand.

In India, one thing that is entrenched in the society is something called the Caste System. The Caste System is this system that has been in place in India for generations that essentially ranks people in society based on their family. The Caste System is used to discriminate against people and in many parts of India, it is very hard or impossible for people to be successful if they are in a lower Caste. One thing Mohatma Gandhi is especially known for (well, besides the whole non-violent resistance/Indian independence thing) is that he was strongly against the Caste System. However, even though Mohatma Gandhi was against the Caste System, it is still in place in India today. The place where I noticed the Caste System most was the Ganges. You would see people doing laundry, and it would be in the area for the “lower Castes.” Also, only people from the Brahmin Caste (the highest Caste) are allowed to be priests, so if you are not born into that Caste, you can’t be a priest in the Hindu religion.

All of the people I talked to at the Ganges about the Caste System (which was only a few, so obviously they don’t speak for everyone) are strongly against it. They see it the same way I do, as institutionalized segregation. However, it still lives on in India, although opinions are mixed over how much of an impact it has on people….apparently the Caste System means more in some parts of India than it does in others, I’ve heard that in many areas, its impossible for anyone to be successful if they are in a lower Caste, but I don’t think that’s true in all areas. I got the vibe that in bigger cities, the Caste System is less important, but to me, I still think it’s a terrible system because it separates people and says that some are above others due to who their parents are.

Anyway, after seeing the amazing site that was the Ganges (all in all, its too hard to describe what going there was like), we went back to the hotel and got some breakfast. Then, I walked around, called home, then we had lunch and went to the airport for our flight to Delhi. In the end, we were only in Varanasi for 24 hours, but the city was awesome, it was really cool experiencing the Hindu holy site and seeing all of the chaos and the random groups chanting in the city. It took an hour to get to the airport, and the airport in Varanasi was by far the most ghetto airport I’ve ever been to, it was great. At the airport, we walked up this one staircase thinking it was the one to go to the restaurant, but after going up 2 flights of stairs, we saw some random Indians down a hallway but no restaurants. They looked at us for like 10 seconds, we thought that was weird, and then they told us that the staircase lead to the air traffic control center and not the restaurant. That’s great, if they weren’t there, we would have ended up at the top of the control tower, great security they have at the Varanasi airport. Also, when our plane was boarding (they have 2 gates, but its people waiting for 10 flights, they just say when they are boarding and then buses come to board the flight), they put the wrong flight number on the board. Classic. We only knew it was our flight because someone asked and they said it was our flight.

When we got to New Delhi, we checked into our hotel, which was the nicest of the trip, then we had dinner and went to the city center. We went around looking for a bar, but almost all of them close at 11. Also, one thing that’s really funny is that at the bars in New Delhi, the menus all say that they won’t serve you unless you are 25, but luckily they will. We walked around, then found one bar that looked nice, but there were only 7 people there. Guess the city center isn’t a good spot for bars, even though there are a bunch of them and our tour guide said it was the best area for it. However, one thing about drinking in India: alcohol is much harder to find there than it is in any of the other countries we went to. In the other countries, alcohol is everywhere, but that’s not the case in India. There aren’t lots of bars, and it seemed like lots of restaurants don’t serve it. It’s available, and not impossible to find, but its not in your face like it is in China or Thailand where beer is everywhere. And Kingfisher is a very good beer, by the way, but only if it’s the lighter version. The dark version is terrible.

The last day, we left the hotel at 7:30 for our flight to Chennai. Our flight left around 11:30, we landed around 2 or so, and we were back on the boat at 3. Then, me and Chris went to check out a little bit of Chennai but we ended up just going to where the mall was and then just walking around that area. Chennai’s pollution was absolutely terrible though, the worst of any city I‘ve ever been to, riding in a tuk tuk around the city, you could taste the air, and it tasted absolutely terrible. After just walking around Chennai, we got back on the boat and that was it for India.

Overall, I loved my time in India. It was definitely an experience going to a country like that since its so different, but it was great. I got to see two awesome sites, the Taj Mahal and the River Ganges in Varanasi, and I just had a great time overall. Some people didn’t like it because it was too dirty and poor (and it most certainly was both of these things, it was the dirtiest country I’ve ever been to by far, and that includes Cambodia), but I thought it was a great and really interesting place to visit and I would definitely go back.

And next up is Egypt. We dock in Alexandria…we are definitely going to check that and Cairo out (along with the Pyramids and Sphinx right near Cairo) and we may also head to Luxor to check out the Valley of the Kings. There is a ton to see in Egypt, most certainly not enough for 5 days, and I’m really excited to check it out (especially since by the time we will get there, I will have been stuck on a boat for 10 days.)

I'm trying to put pictures on right now, but the internet on the boat isn't working well so I don't think they are uploading so I will try again later today.