Day 1:
We got off the ship in Chennai around 11. There were 7 of us going out and 4 or 5 of us had to be back at 2 for a day trip so we just wanted to go somewhere quick for lunch. We had heard of a place called Spencer’s plaza that was like a mall so we figured it would have a food court. As soon as we turned the corner leaving the ship, about 10 taxi and rickshaw drivers swarmed us trying to get us to ride with them. Because we had just gotten there, we didn’t really know how much was a good price, so we were just kind of naming numbers lower than what they said. Some of them told us that Spencer’s plaza was very far away (it isn’t) and others told us it is closed until 2 (it wasn’t), but we didn’t know yet that all taxi drivers want to do is lie to you in India so they can take you to their friends’/family’s restaurants and stores. We finally got into some rickshaws that said if we paid them 50 rupees each ($1) they would take us to the front of the port where cheaper taxis were. The port was pretty industrial and gross so they did save us a decent amount of walking, especially because we were in a rush. So, my roommate Megan and I got in one, our friends Nikki, Tom, and Thomas got in one, and Nicky and Kevin got in a 3rd one. Mine and the one with 3 people had a motor but Nicky and Kevin’s had to be pedaled, so they reached the front of the port a little after us, but we saw them pulling up. Before we got in the other rickshaws (these ones were more like small cars; the first ones were more like bikes) we made sure that our drivers knew that we wanted to stay with our friends and we were all going the same place. Our rickshaw and Tom Nikki and Thomas’ rickshaw left first. We were in front or behind each other almost the whole time. We kept saying we wanted to go to a restaurant, since they told us Spencer’s plaza was closed. They pulled over on the side of the road so that the 5 of us could talk about where we wanted to go. We asked where Nicky and Kevin were and they said they knew where we were going and they would be right there. Nikki Tom and Thomas said we should still go to Spencer’s plaza because that’s the last thing all 7 of us talked about and now that we’re separated, we shouldn’t change the plans. Megan and I were like “ok I guess that’s fine” and our drivers sped off in opposite directions. It is so crazy to drive in one of these things…the drivers drive like NYC cab drivers but it’s like being in a small cab with no complete walls around you. Our driver kept telling us he was taking us to a “good restaurant” and we said we wanted to go to Spencer’s plaza with our friends. He kept saying that our friends were all coming to this restaurant too. We get to the restaurant and we asked where our friends were and the driver said they were coming. He said he would wait outside for us and take us back when we were done. Megan said she wanted to wait outside for our friends so we could be sure they were coming. He assured us they were so we went inside and got a table. We were the ONLY people in the restaurant. After we sat down, Megan went back outside and asked the driver where our friends were and he said they went to Spencer’s plaza. She started screaming at him and asking why he would lie to us and suddenly he mysteriously lost his ability to speak English. She came back inside and we noticed that another group of Semester at Sea students had just gotten to the restaurant. We asked if they knew beforehand that they were coming here and they said no. I decided that the rickshaw drivers are in kohuts with the restaurant. A few minutes later, who walks in but Nicky and Kevin. We asked how they knew we were here and they said they didn’t. They said their driver had told them that all 5 of us were in one cab together and that we were all going the same place. He drove them in circles and tried to take them to shops and after awhile they demanded he let them out of the cab. This was the closest restaurant within walking distance so they just coincidentally came here. When we got back to the ship we learned that Nikki Tom and Thomas were the ONLY ones that made it to Spencer’s plaza. The menu at this restaurant seemed kind of weird. They had Indian food and Chinese food and other random food. Later I saw that a lot of restaurants had that but since this was the first one we went to it seemed weird. We ate and made our rickshaw driver take Nicky and Kevin back to the ship too. Megan had to sit on Nicky’s lap because rickshaws are only meant for 3 people max. He kept trying to take us to shops and we had to get kind of bitchy and make sure he took us to the ship so we wouldn’t miss our trip.
We got back to the ship on time and Nicky, Megan, and I went on a Semester at Sea trip to one of Mother Theresa’s orphanages in Chennai. It was for a class we all have together but I probably would have gone anyway. Our teacher has been to a lot of Mother Theresa’s orphanages but she had never been to this one. She told us that some kids were going to be physically or mentally disabled and that it’s always a little awkward at first but it gets better. I don’t even think she was really prepared for the type of children that this particular branch of the orphanage had. When we got there, one of the Sisters welcomed us and some of us and our teacher asked her some questions about the kids and how they end up there. She said that they have all been abandoned and that a long time ago people used to just leave them on the doorstep but now that that is illegal in India, most parents that don’t feel they can raise the kids bring them there in person. My teacher asked about the medical care they receive and the Sister said that all of the sisters that work there have been trained as nurses, but if something more extreme happens a doctor can come to the orphanage or they can take them to the hospital. My teacher asked if it was the same with dentists and she said it was. When my teacher asked who paid for the care, first the sister said “The Almighty.” When she met a lot of blank stares she elaborated with, “God sends people like you. You pay for it.” I took that to mean that donations pay for most of the care. She said they used to set up adoptions but they stopped doing that last May because all of the kids they have are “unadoptable.” She actually said, “who would want these kids? No one.” I was kind of confused because I knew that some of them would have some disabilities but I thought that to say no one would want them was a little extreme. She also said that they have some adults there too and that once they get kids they keep them until they can train them to do jobs and live on their own or until they have to go into a home for old people. She made it sound like there were some kids that studied things and went to schools and didn’t have disabilities, but we did not see any of them. I really don’t think anyone knew what to expect out of this place. Before we went on the trip, Semester at Sea had asked if possible to bring a few toilet trees with us as a donation. (Side note...a few hours after I wrote this, I got this in an email from my dad: "You might want to fix one thing on your blog entry. I was reading along and started scratching my head trying to figure out what a toilet tree was. What kind of tree ? I mean I know of oak trees and pine trees and a lot of other kinds of trees but I've never heard of a toilet tree. I thought it must be a kind of tree that you go behind to do your business or something. I read it a couple of time and figured out that you were trying to say toiletries." I thought it would be funnier to just leave it & include his message.) Some people had brought small toys too. There were bubbles and stickers and other small things. When the Sister saw what we had brought she alluded to the fact that the toys were kind of pointless. When our teacher asked if we could bring them in anyway she said, “Just go see the children, and you’ll see.” We went in and saw several rooms filled with cribs. I don’t even know what kind of disabilities these kids had, but most of them will probably never walk or speak and half of them couldn’t even make eye contact. A lot of them were too old for a crib by our standards, but I guess for children that can’t walk and whose growth is severely stunted, it’s the most logical option. There were a few who could interact with us more than others. There was one girl who looked like she might have Down’s Syndrome that loved us to blow bubbles on her so she could try to catch them. There was another boy that was really little and only had one arm and one leg but you could tell in his face that he recognized things that were going on and if you put your hand in the crib he would grab your finger like any other baby would. It was beyond awkward at first because no one really knew what to do with these kids since we couldn’t really interact with them. After awhile, they told us we could go upstairs. Upstairs was a lot less awkward because these kids seemed to have varying degrees of mental retardation but they could interact with us much more. A few of them would talk to us but most of them were really shy. We tried to play games with them that they would act like they didn’t know but soon it would be obvious they had played before. First we played some clapping games like Miss Mary Mack that they seemed to have never played before. But, when we moved on to ring around the rosy, they acted like they didn’t know how but when we told them we would teach them, we started singing the song and they fell on the ground before we even did. They definitely knew how to play. We also played duck duck goose with them which was really funny. For this part of the orphanage, I wish we were allowed to bring in cameras because these kids would have loved digital cameras and having their picture taken. The orphanage was all around depressing, but what the nuns there do is really admirable. It was clean and safe and what the one sister said is probably true; no one would adopt most of these kids, so at least they have a place to be cared for. Nicky said he was talking to one of the nuns and she said there are Mother Theresa’s orphanages all over the USA, which I had no idea about.
We went back to the ship to wait for our friends to be ready to eat dinner. We noticed how DIRTY we were. Chennai was probably the dirtiest city I spent time in. My roommate said she blew her nose and black stuff came out, so of course we all had to see what was up our noses. Our other friend said that she stuck a tissue in her ear and black stuff came out of that too. We figured it was pointless to shower since we were going back out so we turned on the TV and What Happens in Vegas was on so we relaxed for an hour or two and watched that. By the time it was over all of our friends had gotten back so we got ready to go out. We decided to try again to go to Spencer’s Plaza and eat in the food court. This time we took 2 actual taxis and made it abundantly clear that we were going to SPENCER’S PLAZA. We ate Pizza Hut which was amazing because I haven’t had real pizza all semester. Before we got to India, my “extended family mom” told me that she spent 3 weeks in India once with two of her friends that are a couple. She said that single women are really looked down upon in India and that the entire time no one would speak to her. She said that since it was obvious her 2 friends were a couple, they were treated okay but that some people would be rude to her. So, I guess I should have been somewhat expecting what happened at the table, but I figured since we were in a big group and no one was clearly a couple, nothing that weird would happen. We got to Spencer’s plaza and 3 of our friends didn’t want pizza hut so they went somewhere else but 5 of us, 3 girls and 2 guys, went to pizza hut. We saw a deal on the menu that was meant for 6 people so we figured that would be a good thing to share. We wanted to ask if we could order stuffed crust pizza as part of the deal. When the waiter came, Nicky said “we had a question about one of these deals” and the waiter said okay. I was right next to the waiter and I was the only one with the menu in my hand open to the right page, so it made sense that I would ask. I pointed at the deal we wanted and only got as far as “we were wondering if…” before the waiter cut me off, raised his voice, pointed his finger at Nicky and said “
You ask the questions!” That really caught us off guard because we were in freaking pizza hut, not out on the streets somewhere, but I guess that’s just how things are there. The pizza was delicious regardless of whether I was allowed to ask questions about it and after we ate we bought a few small things from around the mall and then went back to the ship.
Day 2:
I had to meet my group for my trip at 3:15 in the morning. That sucked. We got to the airport and when I went to the bathroom, they were holes in the ground, like cleaner versions of the one in Morocco. It didn’t really bother me like it bothered some girls on my trip, it was just unexpected because we were in a public place. My roommate calls them squatty potties. When we were going through security, women and men had to stand in different lines. When they used the wand on us, we had to stand behind a curtain, even though they never really touched us, and women were the ones doing the wand anyway. We took a 2 hour flight to New Delhi and then had a connecting flight to Varanasi that took about an hour. The airline was really nice…my favorite part was probably that you could bend the headrests to fit around your head so I could actually sleep and not do that head bouncing thing that plagues my public transportation naps. Varanasi is a holy city for Hinduism in India. The Ganges river flows along it and sometimes people go to Varanasi to die, because supposedly if you die there your rebirth will go well or something like that….I don’t really know because our tour guides for the trip weren’t all that great. They were really knowledgeable and if you asked them questions they always knew the answers but they weren’t very forthcoming with their information so sometimes I would just find myself looking at something and taking pictures and wondering hmmm what might this mean. After awhile we learned to ask them but at first it was weird because in other tours I’ve been on, if anything they OVERtalk you about what you’re doing. When we got to Varanasi we went on some “shopping trips” (another way to bring students to friends’/family stores) to a silk factory and some other random places. The silk factory was interesting because we got to watch them actually weaving the silk and we could see how intricate of a process it is. The other stores just got kind of old after awhile. After the shopping, we were told we were going to ride in rickshaws and watch “evening prayers” but we didn’t really know much more about it. The buses pulled up to this field where there were probably between 75 and 100 rickshaws (the kind with a bike that have to be pedaled) waiting for us. I don’t know HOW they managed to organize that but it was pretty funny. When we got in them and left, it looked like we were part of a parade. Indian people were lined up on the sides taking pictures and videos with their camera phones. The ride was pretty long compared to other rickshaw rides I had taken and it was pretty intense because the bike rickshaws have NOTHING to protect you from the crazy streets. You are totally out in the open and these streets were definitely 10 times more crowded than the ones in Chennai. Every intersection was like a death sentence. People in India don’t stop for stop signs, they just kind of go through them and honk their horns. There were stoplights that weren’t turned on and looked like they hadn’t been turned on in 25 years or so. We took funny videos but it would probably use too many internet minutes to put them on the blog. At first, the streets were full of cars and other rickshaws, but after awhile as we got closer to the river it became mostly foot traffic that was making it so crowded, so that was interesting to see because that’s more what I was expecting in India than what I had seen so far. We got to the river and we watched a prayer ceremony that apparently happens every night. 7 men training to be priests perform the ceremony and it is to give thanks to the river goddess for sustaining everyone for another day. It was the longest prayer of thanks I’ve ever seen. We didn’t even stay the whole time and I felt like we were there forever. It was really interesting but they kept doing the same thing over and over…and over. Our guide said that most local people don’t go to the ceremony and that most of the Indian people we saw weren’t from the city, they were probably on pilgrimages somewhere or visiting Varanasi for a short time. After we left the ceremony, we had to find our same rickshaw driver, which was kind of hard because you can’t walk anywhere in India, ESPECIALLY if you’re a tourist, without at least 3 kids trying to sell you things. Whatever anyone has seen on a movie or tv about beggars or people selling things in India, the real thing is probably that times 5. We found our driver and got driven back to the buses and went back to the hotel. We ate dinner and I was passed out by 10.
Day 3:
We met downstairs in the hotel at 4:45 in the morning and took buses to the Ganges river for a sunrise boat ride. The Ganges is known for being disgusting but no one in India thinks so because it’s so significant in Hinduism. People were bathing in it and washing their clothes in it. When we asked our guide about the contamination in the water and the fact that people still bathe in it he said, “it’s very dirty right by the land because of all the people, but in the middle of the river, it is very pure.” The river flows and that isn’t really possible, but my friend Kaeleigh pointed out that it just shows how strong their beliefs are that they refuse to believe the water could be bad. Regardless of how dirty the water is by the land, that’s exactly where people were bathing and washing their clothes so it really doesn’t matter anyway. Basically they worship the Ganges and bathing in it is one of the most pure things you can do. We also passed the “favorite cremation site” in India where they pretty much build a big fire and put a body in it and friends and family come watch as a funeral-type ceremony. The next day after the body has been completely burned the family takes the ashes and spreads them in the river. That felt really awkward and intrusive, like we shouldn’t be watching it. The boat ride lasted awhile and it’s one of the only times I watched the sun come up so it was a cool thing to do. Plus, watching the coast of Varanasi is pretty much just a big people-watching extravaganza. People are exercising, doing yoga, practicing for the evening prayer ceremony; there is something going on everywhere you look. After the boat ride we went back to the hotel and had breakfast and then drove to Sarnath to see where Buddha preached his first sermon. We saw a Buddhist temple and we saw the tree that Buddha sat under the first time he spoke about his philosophies. It was interesting but it wasn’t anywhere that you needed to spend a ton of time because the temple was small and once you looked at the tree and the statues and stuff, there wasn’t much more to look at. Even though Sarnath was only a few miles away from Varanasi, it was a lot cleaner, which made me wonder if people really live in that area or if it is just a popular Buddhist site. After the temple we went to see some ruins in Sarnath and in one area of the ruins a Buddhist prayer ceremony was going on…at least that’s what I assume it was. Our guides just gave us a meeting time so they weren’t around to ask. It was nice to be able to separate from the group for a little while. I loved the trip I went on but most of the people on it were the most ignorant, annoying people I have met so far on semester at sea. I couldn’t stand how much time I spent listening to their ridiculousness so it was nice to just walk around the ruins with Kaeleigh and get away from everyone. After Sarnath we went to the Varanasi airport and had lunch which was probably my favorite meal I ate the whole time. That was surprising because the Varanasi airport is pretty sketchy. It’s pretty much just a big room and you either board your plane in gate 1 or gate 2. We flew back to New Delhi and did some sightseeing. We saw where the presidential palace is and the area around it reminded me of the DC mall. Our guides told us that right now India has its first woman president, which really surprised me given how women are treated. A woman in India holds a position that a woman in America has NEVER held, and really that only one woman has even come close to holding, and yet I can’t ask a question about my food in a restaurant? I really just don’t get that. After the palace, we stopped in a big park and a lot of people were there having picnics and just doing whatever so that was cool to see. Apparently there was a “baton relay” about to be kicked off, which the newspaper made sound like a little mini Olympics but we couldn’t really tell much about it, I’m just guessing that’s why so many people were there. After the park we went to a Hindu temple and I wish we could have taken pictures inside because it was really nice there. It was a lot bigger than the Buddhist one plus it was mostly open-air which made it seem even bigger. Hindu gods are pretty colorful and crazy looking so it was cool to look at. We went to our hotel in New Delhi which was really nice. New Delhi itself was like being in a totally different country. It wasn’t dirty and it had nice buildings and it was just a lot different than Varanasi and especially Chennai. When we got into the hotel we were “welcomed” by the hotel employees with leis and some of that colorful chalk on our foreheads. The hotel was kind of like a miniature town – it had stores, bars, a couple of clubs…not that I was really awake enough for any of that but after dinner we walked around some just to see it. I passed out by 11. Day 4:
We left the hotel at 5 in the morning and took a 2 hour train ride to Agra, the city with the Taj Mahal. When we got to Agra we took an hour long bus ride to see an old palace. We drove back to Agra and did some more “shopping.” By this point, everyone except the people who have unlimited amounts of money to spend on shopping were pretty sick of shopping and wanted to just get to the Taj Mahal. We tried to talk to our trip leader from Semester at Sea and she told us that she agreed with us and that she didn’t want to go either, but that India is the only country where SAS can’t regulate the shopping trips because it is so much a part of their culture and what they do that we HAVE to let them take us to these places. That kind of made me realize why our cab drivers were so weird about trying to take us everywhere except where we asked to go…I guess there is some kind of obligation to help the people you know and their stores. Plus, someone said that a lot of times the drivers get a commission of how much people they bring there spend. We spent the minimal amount of time possible in these stores and then headed toward the Taj Mahal. Before we went there, we stopped at the Agra fort that is across from it. It was cool to look at it but it was built by Akbar, the same king that built the palace we saw earlier, so it was kind of similar and I could have done without one of them. We FINALLY got to the Taj Mahal and women and men had to get in separate lines like in the airports. I noticed that the men had 3 metal detectors and the women only had one. They were reallyyyy strict with their security at the Taj Mahal. Some people had made signs that say “thank you” to hold up in front of the Taj and take pictures for their parents and they wouldn’t even let them bring those in. What most people ended up doing was turning around, shoving the paper down their pants, and getting back in line with their friends. When they would take the signs out once we got to the Taj Mahal, security guards would go crazy and blow whistles and rip it out of their hands. If you went closer to the Taj where it wasn’t so crowded, you could usually get away with it, but at first it was kind of funny to watch all these security guards get so worked up over a piece of paper. We took lots of pictures and then went inside. The inside wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as the outside and we didn’t stay inside that long. The outside was beautiful and I couldn’t believe how big it actually was. I was surprised at how many Indian tourists there were, which looking back I guess is stupid because in America we go see famous monuments and stuff and, unless you live near them, there’s a good chance you only see them once like these people were probably doing. We saw a group of Indian people taking a picture, and someone from their group was taking the picture so they couldn’t be in it. Kaeleigh offered to take it so they could all be in it and they looked really confused, like that isn’t something that was typically offered to them. But, they said yeah and when she was done they told us to get in the picture too. People in other countries love pictures with Americans. We didn’t have anywhere near enough time at the Taj Mahal but we left to meet our group at 6 like we were supposed to. We got to the meeting place right at 6, but our group had already left. Me, Nicky, and Kaeleigh walked back to the bus ourselves and were followed for a good 10-15 minutes by the same 3 kids trying to sell us stuff. At first 2 adults were with them but they gave up really quickly. The kids spoke good English and they were cute and at first I felt sorry for them, until Kaeleigh tried to give them a dollar just to be nice and one of them said “I don’t want one dollar unless you’re going to give me four more.” I noticed that the people who
beg in India are a lot different than the people who
sell things in India and the people that sell things are pretty annoying. We found our group and went back to the train station. The platforms at the train stations are sooo crowded and this time there were a lot of young children around. They would go up to people and put their hands to their mouths like they wanted something to eat. There were a lot of fruit carts around so Kaeleigh decided to buy a bunch of bananas and hand them out. The bananas in India were a little smaller than in the USA, but were the biggest bunches of bananas I’ve ever seen and they only cost a dollar. The whole trip I didn’t give anything to the beggars because if you do, the ones around them only want something too and it just gets too intense. But, I figured I’d buy some bananas with Kaeleigh and a few other people who were doing it and that we were in a contained environment and our train was coming soon and we were going to have soo many bananas that what is the worst that could happen….wrong. We have named the situation that followed, “The Banana Brawl.” At first, there were several of us with a ton of bananas in our hands and we would give them to a kid and the kid would get really happy and eat it and ask for another one and we’d give it to them and it was really cute and it made you feel good but after a minute or two it was the same few kids getting bananas and we bought them for everyone so we started to look for other kids. Nicky came with me to the end of the train platform and I couldn’t really find any kids and it felt awkward to give them to adults that weren’t flat out asking for them so I just went back to where the group was and started giving them to the same kids again. In the next 5 minutes, all of the kids in the train station must have come out of wherever they were hiding when I looked for them because all of the sudden we were surrounded by children and we couldn’t rip the bananas off of the stem (is that what it’s even called?) fast enough and they were ripping bananas out of our hands AND out of each other’s hands. It was madness. Somehow these kids managed to procure plastic bags and were putting the bananas in bags. That didn’t bother me so much because that could be all they eat for awhile, except for one girl who, if she were in America, would be the bitchy bully child. She had the biggest sack of bananas like she was Santa Claus and there was a little boy who hadn’t gotten bananas, but we were out, so Nicky asked her to give him one and she screamed NO! and then laughed. I kind of wanted to buy one banana for every kid in my 100 foot radius except her, but I decided it wouldn’t be worth being swarmed by these kids again. When we ran out of bananas, some people started giving them stickers, which was somehow even worse than bananas. Kaeleigh had scratches on her hands and these kids were insane and I’m pretty sure that seeing how happy they were in the beginning made the banana brawl worth it, but I haven’t finished deciding yet. Some people on the trip bought them soda too, soooo obviously I was on a trip with EXTREMELY intelligent people. Anyway, we took the train back to New Delhi and didn’t get to our hotel until around 11:45 so I took a shower and went to bed. All these early mornings on this trip did nothing for my social life. The next day we woke up at 5:30 (which unfortunately was sleeping in on this trip), flew back to Chennai, and I went back to Spencer’s plaza with Kaeleigh because she hadn’t been yet and she wanted a couple of things.
A random observation about India: even weirder than the way women are treated in public is the fact that local Indians are allowed to get in front of tourists in lines, no questions asked. They don’t even say anything they just all the sudden are there. I thought that was really random, and it happened several times, even in small lines like the line for the escalator.
Anyway, some people I talked to loved India and some people hated it. I loved it because it was nothing like the United States and that’s why I came on this trip. Yeah, weird things happened and everyone lies to make money and I can’t ask questions in restaurants, but that’s what makes it a different country. I would definitely go back because there are so many places to see that I never would have had time to see in this trip. As far as the trip I did do, I’m glad I chose this trip because I feel like I saw several very different areas. I just wish the semester at sea big overnights like this had less people because if I had to listen to one more person on my trip make a comment like “Can those people with their shit [people selling things] just shut the fuck up? I fucking hate them. Fuck that” I probably would have gone crazy. It really annoys me that you can always tell who came on this trip because they have a genuine passion for travelling and want these experiences to stay with them for the rest of their lives apart from those who came on this trip because they’re rich and they have as much money as they want to spend and they really couldn’t care less about all of these experiences. Basically, what it comes down to is I had an amazing time and I’m glad I chose the trip I did, but the one way the trip would have been perfect is if I could have punched 95% of my travel companions in the face. twice. and then thrown them into the banana brawl.
Here are some pictures, in a messed up order as usual:
Varanasi from the sunrise boat:
what the motorized rickshaws look like:
the streets of Varanasi on the way to the evening prayers:
Kaeleigh, Nicky, and I about to put our candles in the water & make a wish on our sunrise boat ride:
some oh-so-attractive men about to bathe in the Ganges:
Kaeleigh and I in front of the Buddhist temple:
showing how BIG the Taj Mahal is:
outside of the Hindu temple:
after we were welcomed into our hotel in New Delhi:
this picture is for my parents...Kaeleigh let me risk having the security guards rip it out of my hands:
Nicky, me, and Kaeleigh in front of the Taj Mahal:
Taj Mahal again:
me in front of Angkor Wat:
