India

Namaste!
I just finished my traveling through India and it was quite an adventure. Independently traveling, compared to doing a Semester at Sea trip, is very exhausting and usually frustrating at times. This port was by far the most frustrating one to travel through. I was with four other people; Tolan. Sarah, Carson, and Thomas. We really wanted to see the Taj Mahal which is in Agra, northern India, but the ship docked in Chennai first and then Cochin – both of which are in Southern India. But, we booked a flight to Delhi for the second day and a flight from Varanasi on the second to last day. That left us the 12th, 13th, and 14th to travel.

Disclaimer: Due to the frustration my group and I had while we had while traveling, I am still a little bitter towards India. So, if you foresee your self taking any of my upcoming hostility toward India personally then maybe you should not read this post. Love, Jill.
 
Day 1 March 11th 2010
We arrived in Chennai, India. I once again had no idea what to expect. I was told it was gonna be hot, poor, and dirty. That was an understatement. I was also told that every American women is looked at as a slut when they get to India due to shows like Baywatch, so all women should have their knees and shoulders covered while traveling India. That was kind of an exaggeration.
            Sarah and I decided to go on a hunt for an internet café while Greta was on a short SAS trip that was done in a few hours. We were told that the internet café was less than 3k away so we decided to walk. We walked, and walked, and got hounded by people, and walked some more. It was blistering hot and humid. i was wearing jean capris so my knees were covered. Needless to say, I was sweating my balls off. Anyways, No sign of an internet café or even much civilization at all was there. We saw Eric and Thomas go by in a rickshaw and decided to join them. They got off back at the ship and Sarah and I ventured with this rickshaw driver to an internet café. It was a journey but we eventually got there and they did not have wifi or the skype. Aka it was a completely worthless trip. I hate getting my hopes up and getting shot down when it comes to skyping!
Later that day Sarah and I went to meet up with Greta back at the ship. It was hard to want to leave the ship again and explore some more but we did it because we are only in India once. We stuck with the same rickshaw driver. He showed us around to all these shops, the big mall, a spot for lunch, and the beach. It was a nice day of exploring Chennai. I bought a few things but the best thing was the wild pair of pants I scored on. just kidding, but really they are wild. The last event of the night was checking out the beach. It was pretty nice but no one was in bathing suits, which i expected. There were mini carnival rides there for kids and snack stands in the parking lot. I got to ride a horse for a dollar. It was sweet. I can’t say Chennai, India had a crazy night life so we played it cool on the ship for the rest of the night.

Day 2 March 12th 2010
This morning began the most adventurous week of my life. We were late leaving for the airport to catch our flight to Delhi. Consequently, our taxi drive was fifty times crazier than it would have been if we weren’t running late. But, we made it to the airport on time, caught our flight, had a smooth ride, and got to Delhi safely. (By the way, I use to the term airport lightly because it didn’t actually have any terminals and the desks were all outside.) The airport had a tourist help desk that hooked us up with a ‘nice’ hotel and taxi driver to get us there. We were given the choice between two hotels - one cheap and one cheaper. We decided to go to the nicer of the two and that was a good decision. The hotel was called a Sheraton but it was farrrrr from it. Anyways, I am done bashing. The hotel gave us what we needed - a bed and a bathroom.
Before leaving the hotel we decided to talk to them about train tickets and such. Let me lay out the situation for you: We currently planned on going to Agra the next morning by train then spending the day there and taking the overnight train to Varanasi. In Varanasi we’d explore for the day, get a hotel for the night, and then catch our flight back to the ship the next afternoon. The problem was that we did not have a train ticket from Delhi to Agra and we were on the wait list for the overnight train to Varanasi. In addition to the fact that we did not book any other hotels. Basically, after spending way too much time in the hotel’s travel agent’s office we decided that we’d let the agent get us a driver to Agra and then back to Delhi and spend another night in Delhi. Then, take a flight from Delhi to Varanasi the next afternoon. The situation kind of sucked but we figured it was our only option. It still kind of left our plans in the air but alteast we had a plan B if we didn’t get on to the overnight train. Needless to say, we left the hotel travel agent’s office very frustrated. We needed to eat.
Next, we headed to get some food. We were all about finding a local restaurant to eat a good India meal at. We succeeded and had a great meal. Some sag chicken, paneer, chicken masala, naan, and more that i don’t know the name of. To be honest I was a little nervous about eating the food because I don’t have the most reliable stomach int he world and I know that I couldn't rely on India having the most reliable toilets either. But, no worries, my stomach was fine.
After lunch we were on a quest to find an instrument shop for Tolan. Tolan was determined to get a sweet instrument because he is totally musical and his parents gave him money for his bday to pick one. Long story short, he bartered the hell out of this one guy and got a Harmonium and 2 drums. We were told that the post office would have time to pack the instruments and get them ready to ship before they close. Well, we took them there and they began to pack them up. Don’t even begin to think that they used standard shipping boxes because they didn't. They wrapped the instruments in layers of bubble wrap and then HAND SEWED potato looking sacks around them. about 2 hours later they were done. At this point the post office was closed. COOL. We decided to just lug them around for the day and ship them in Agra. When we got to post office in Agra they told us that they needed to see inside the packages but they did not have an xray machine. There was no f’ing way we were letting them open these packages and then take the time to resew them up. We said forget it and we decided to just bring them onto the ship so that Tolan can just ship them when we get back to the U.S.A. Consequently, we were lugging these instruments around the next couple days, which isn’t as big of a damper as it may sound.
Later that evening, since the instrument ordeal took about 4 hours, we decided to go to a government run travel agent because we felt like the guy at the hotel was ripping us off (this becomes a common theme throughout the whole trip). We got the travel agency and the people running it were cool as hell. It was a guy and girl that were dating. The guy hooked us up with drivers, tour guides, hotels, and train tickets for the rest of our time in India. It was a little pricy but it was freak load of stress off our shoulders. They were suppose to close and go to a movie at 7 and we kept them there til like 8:30 with all our questions and little details so we decided to make it up to them by treating them to dinner. They picked the place and it was sweet. It was called Picodellis. It was totally modern and cool.
The last stop of the night was the movie theatre. We couldn’t be in India without seeing BOLLYWOOD MOVIE! The movie we saw was called Atitha. Before we got into the theatre the guards frisked us and took our camera batteries until after the movie. The movie ended up being pretty bad, especially since it was all in Hindi, but I am glad we went. The popcorn was banging though no doubt.
That night I had my first hallucination due to the Malaria meds I am on. I was sleeping next to my friend Carson. I woke up and I was positive that she was spooning with the bell boy from that hotel. I stared for a while, unsure if I should give them some time alone or maybe save Carson from this weird boy. I decided to reach over and touch him to make sure he was there. Needless to say, it was just Carson...alone.

Day 3 March 13th 2010

So today was one of the most frustrating days of my life so it will be very difficult to keep this entry G rated when it comes to my language. But, i will try my best.
First of all, we were off to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. We only had that day until like 11 pm to spend in Agra so we were excited to get there and explore. The travel agents told us that it would take three hours tops to get to Agra. 7 HOURS LATER we arrived in Agra via stick shift car on the streets, not highways, of India. Oh, and we specifically said that we did not want a tour guide because we really wanted to be able to go around on our own and not just be tourists. Well, we got out of the car in Agra and there was our good ‘ol tour guide. HE SUCKED. We got to the Taj Mahal happy as can be (kinda). I won’t lie, it was really really beautiful - better than the pictures I had seen. The story about it is sweet too. Basically an emporer had the taj built for his wife when she died and her and his tombs are the only ones in the whole building. Everything about the Taj Mahal is symmetrical so that makes the architecture look awesome. We got there around 4:30 so we decided to stick around for sunset. Time went by, the sun went down, and we were STILL there. FYI there is nothing to do at the Taj after you’ve already taken all of the pictures you want and seen every inch of the mosc. Our tour guide conveniently lost his cell phone and told us to wait for him before we leave. Well, he never came back so we decided to head out. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, our tour guide was at the exit looking for us. We were pretty much fuming at him because he wasted a good part of our day. But, to think positively, if i was stranded somewhere for 2 hours in India I would definitely want it to be at the Taj Mahal.
Unfortunately, the day did not get much better. The tour guides and rickshaw drivers have been notorious for bringing tourists to these Marble Emporium shops. Basically, they are huge stores with stuff from carpets to gadget at ridiculous prices. If they bring tourists to these stores they get a free t-shirt or something so they always do it. Well, we knew about this setup already so we specifically told our tour guide that we DO NOT want to go to any of those places we just want to go get spices and tea..........I am sure you can guess where our next stop was. ONE OF THOSE STUPID EMPORIUMS!!!! I wanted to murder this tour guide, as did all my friends. To top it off, we thought we had some more time to go shopping and maybe get some food but our tour guide then told us that we were an hour and a half from the train station and we have to be there two hours early. Aka we were now heading to the freakin’ train station. OUR WHOLE DAY CONSISTED OF A CAR RIDE, THE TAJ FOR WAY TOO LONG, AND A DUMB @$$ EMPORIUM.
So, we headed to the train station. I don’t know why I thought this train station would be even some what decent but it was NOT. AT ALL. We arrived at 9:30 pm. We walked to the ‘waiting room’. Our whole walk there we were dodging bird poop because the rafters of the station were COVERED with birds. Then, we got into the waiting room and I couldn’t help but notice a few RATS running around ...ew. An hour and a half later we were getting excited that our train would be there soon so we carried our stuff to the platform. We checked the train times and realized our train was running an hour late. (notice how everything is getting better and better as the day goes on) My friends were hungry so we looked for some food. I cant say i had much of an appetite at this point. At this point in our journey I was in a very bad mood but I knew everyone was so I tried not to express my anger, i just I kept quite. We found a food area and sat there. My friends ordered doll (a gravy based stew type thing) and some naan (bread). Well, when the ‘waiter’ brought out the doll he spilled it not all over my pants (that i planned to wear the rest of the trip) but also down the side of my backpack into my water bottle holder and onto my hat that was in the holder. Lucky for this Indian man he did not know the meaning of F*** you so i refrained from even saying it. But, I would really have liked to call my mom crying and get her to buy me a plane ticket back to my ship. After dinner we went back to the waiting room and propped our feet up on our bags so no rats touched us. Basically for every hour that went by the train delayed an hour. FINALLY at 2:45 am our train arrived. But, the train was about 40 cars long and of course we were at the wrong end so we had to sprint to the correct end with our backpacks and Tolan’s instruments. LUCKILY, we found our beds on the sleeper train and they were perfectly fine. That was definitely a sigh of relief. My friend Thomas was on the top bunk next to mine so I didn’t feel completely unsafe.
That night I had another Hallucination due to my malaria medicine. I woke up in the middle of the night and on the end of Thomas’s bed I could have swore there was a monkey. The same monkey I saw swinging from the rafters at the train station. I wasn’t sure what to do about it so I closed my eyes and fell asleep as fast as possible.

Day 4 March 14th, 2010

I woke up very confused, somehow forgetting that I was on a sleeper train in the middle of India. Originally, we thought the train was suppose to get to Varanasi at like noon. Therefore, we assumed that since it was 3 hours late to pick us up then it won’t be getting to Varanasi until like 3 pm. We were wrong, luckily. We talked to some India people on the train that let us know that our stop was coming up in about 25 minutes. This really really helped us considering there was no conductor or anyone telling us when to get off or even what station we were at when we stopped. It all worked out. We got off at the right stop and found our driver who for some reason thought our train was suppose to get in at 7 am so he was mad that we were so late? whatevs.
That day, we made it clear to our driver that we did not need a tour guide to show us around the city or take us to lunch - we wanted to explore on our own. So, for the rest of the afternoon we explored Varanasi. We were not in a very touristy area which was nice. When we walked down the dirt roads we were see a combination of MONKEYS (!!!), rickshaws, cars, bikes, and livestock on the roads. There were stray dogs walking around all over the place. The shops (i also use this word lightly because there were no doors, walls, lights, or air condition) along the sides of the road consisted of all sorts of stuff but mostly fabric, jewelry, shoes, and mini snack shacks. There was this one back alley of shops (which were really little huts) that we went down. As we walked down the India people would say stuff like “Hi Hello Lady, would you like some scarf?” and if you ignored them you would hear “Hi Hello? LADY? Hiii!”. All the huts had a sign that said ‘fixed price’ on it but the prices were far from fixed. Although stuff was already super cheap we still felt the need to barter the prices down because we knew they had hiked them up just because we were tourists. After shopping for a while we got lunch at a local place again. All the Indian food was kind of blending together - some mush, like pareer or masala, with some chicken, and some bread - either naan or roti. It was all usually good but it put our stomachs in a doozie (doozie is in my word dictionary - interesting)
After dinner we had plans to meet a guide back at our hotel because we were going on boat ride with him that evening. The boat ride was on the Ganges at sunset. I don’t know too much about the Ganges but what I do know is that it is the most sacred water for the Indians. They bath in this water, they wash their clothes, they drink it, they do everything in it. But, it is some of the dirtiest water ever - we were advised to not even make contact with it. Along this Ganges are these stairs called Ghats. They are just stairs that face the sun that run into the Ganges. As we boated down the river we would see people bathing on the ghats.
There is one famous spot on the Ganges called the burning site. At this spot there are fires built to burn the bodies of dead people. This is very symbolic in India. When someone dies they are suppose to be burned in a fire (just like a camp fire) for 24 hours. Their soul goes to heaven and then their bones and ash are tossed into the Ganges afterwards. Usually only the men related to the burning person watch the fire because tears are said to interrupt the soul going to heaven and since women are known to be more emotional, they do risk the chance of crying. These burning sites were really interesting.
The rest of the night consisted of us just walking around Varanasi some more and then heading back to the hotel. We had plans to wake up for the sunset so we knew not to stay up late.

Day Five: March 15th, 2010

Rise and Shine at 5:30 a.m. We headed back to the Ganges for another boat ride. This ride we went the opposite direction down the river so we saw some different ghats and such. Since it was morning there were a lot more people bathing and playing in the water to get ‘clean’. The sun rise was epic so I am glad we got to see it. Last night the mosquitos were horrific but they were not nearly as bad this morning. There were lots of monkeys on the ghats this morning along with some goats, cows, chickens, and puppies. I love puppies and it killed me that I couldn’t play with them!
After our boat ride we decided to walk down to the burning sites because you couldn’t see too much from the water. While we were there there was only one fire currently burning. We saw someone’s intestine’s in the middle of it. It really hit us that people are actually burned in these fires. I also saw a stray dog gnawing on a human bone :(. I learned that there are a few types of people that are not burned in the fires but rather just thrown right into the ganges. Two of these types of people are kids and pregnant women. The reason is along the lines of the idea that kids have not lived long enough to have a soul worth burning (or something) . And, consequently, since they do not burn kids then they will not burn a women with a child inside her either.
Next on the agenda was our city tour. We went to a University in Varanasi. It only costs about 8 dollars a year, believe it or not. We then checked out a few temples. I had expressed my interest in all the monkeys around India and how I loved to watch them. Because I had expressed that interest, our tour guide took us to the monkey temple. Well, this is where my relationship with monkeys went from love-love to love-hate. The walk way to the temple was filled with monkeys. No cages, no gates, no fences, NOTHING. Well, I saw a baby monkey eating a banana so I crouched down to watch it. Apparently its mommy didn’t like this because she began to SPRINT, if monkeys can sprint, at me. For those who know me very well know that I did a very obnoxious scream of horror and ran away. Luckily, I was safe. But, I didn’t like that one bit. Needless to say, we were not there much longer. I do find it crazy that monkeys’ bodies work so similar to ours. Like if a monkey wants a banana it just grabs a banana and peels it with it’s fingers. If you see a monkey- pay attention to how it sits. I noticed a bunch of these monkeys sitting on their butts and resting their arm on their knee just like a human would. Weird, So weird.
Last stop on the city tour was a silk shop. FINALLY a tour guide that wasn’t trying to rip us off. This was a wholesale shop that loved our business and had an actual fixed price that was very do-able. I’m not gonna go into details of what I bought here because a lot of you will be finding out around christmas time :)
It was now time to go back to Cochin, where the ship was. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) We went to the airport and worked our flights out, luckily. After some confusion we all got onto the same flight to Mumbai (where our layover was). When we arrived in Mumbai we had a layover and then were heading to Cochin. Well, no one decided to tell us that there were two different airports in Mumbai so rather than having a leisurely layover we were actually completely freaking out trying to figure out where to go. We found it. We got on the plane. We got to Cochin. PHEW! One would think that we would go right to the ship to shower and sleep. But, no. We needed to go through immigration before getting back on the ship and the office closed at 8 p.m. It was now 10:30 p.m. so we had to stay in a hotel room that was about 10 minutes from our ship. It was kind of a tease but it could have been worst.

Day Six: March 16th, 2010

We finally reached our last day of India. I thought I would never see the day. My stomach was A little confused so I wasn’t really trying to go anywhere. But, once again I figured that I was only going to be India once, EVER. (sorry for the pessimism)
Anyways, I went out with Greta, Sarah, and our new friend uhh Kayla? I think that was her name. Cochin is a set of islands so we decided to take a ferry over to another island to do some shopping and get stamps. Well, after about a half hour we were uncomfortably hot and didn’t really see anywhere to shop so we got stamps and called it a day.
After getting back to the ship I realized I still had 2,000 ruppies which is about $40. I did not want to leave India with that much India money because I would never have any use for it, ever. Consequently, I had to get back off the ship to find a money exchange place. OF COURSE this was not a simple task. I took a rickshaw (a motor scooter w/ a cart built onto it). The first bank we went to did not have any U.S. dollars. They recommended another bank. The rickshaw driver had quite some trouble finding this bank but eventually we got there. When I got there they told me they were able to do it. They took about a half hour to figure out how many U.S. dollars to give me. Then, 20 minutes later they realized that in the whole bank they only had four 5 dollar bills and six 1 dollar bills - I needed 40 dollars. So whatever. I decided to just exchange some of my money for that 26 dollars and then just go shopping with my extra ruppies because I did not have the tolerance to try to find another place. Well, once again, my driver took me to all those stupid freaking emporium shops. I did not have much patience so when I saw the emporium coming up on the road I would be like I DON’T WANT TO GO THERE SO DO NOT STOP. He got the point. Finally, I just told him to take me back to the ship. Beleive it or not something convenient actually happened - on the way back to the ship we passed an outdoor market, which I wanted to go to initially, and we stopped there. I spent the rest of my money and FINALLY headed back to the ship. The rickshaw driver knew I was a female tourist so he totally tried to rip me off but I was ready for it so I gave him the amount of money I had thought was legit and ran onto the ship before he could do anything about it. THE END.

PEACE OUT INDIA