Chennai, India

Family and Friends,
I know that this post is coming on the same day as my entry from Mauritius, but don’t worry, I haven’t been traveling in warp speed, the blog website wasn’t working for a couple of days but now it’s up and running again. If anyone would like to know, I actually won the pie-eating contest by more than a minute and I am now a ship-wide legend for my Kobayashi-esque eating skills. But even with my gold medal in our grasp, my team only finished fourth out of ten groups and needless to say we were greatly disappointed.
India was a complete culture shock for me and everyone else that had never been there. Many of the professors had been there and tried to tell us that it was going to be a completely overwhelming experience. I tried to listen to what they said, but it was much more than I had ever expected. Just stepping off of the ship was overwhelming because of the distinct smell and feel of the Indian air. The smell can best be summed up as a mixture of curry, dirt, and a toilet. I know that probably sounds awful, I know it did to me when people tried to explain it, but you get used to it quickly and it soon became a non-issue. I spent most of my first day in transit from Chennai, where the ship was docked, to Delhi. The whole first day I was waiting for the culture shock to set in, but since so much time was spent in a plane or a bus trying to get somewhere it was hard to get a feel for the country. The next morning during our 4 A.M. train ride to Agra was where it started to hit me. I cannot sleep on a plane or in a train, and usually this is to my disadvantage because I lose a lot of sleep that I could be having, but this trip was different because I wanted to take it all in and see everything I could. We traveled past many small towns and villages on our voyage, and almost every home had a stack of dried cow-dung cakes outside of it to be used as fuel for fires and cooking. I saw a woman walking directly behind a cow and saw her collect its dung and start forming it in to a cake and I knew that I was in a totally different place than I had ever been. Also along the sides of the train tracks were essentially the village toilets, because most people cannot afford running water, so it was a common sight to see people squatting right outside the train windows. We spent the afternoon in Agra visiting a few different historical sites. The first was an abandoned city made out of sandstone that was run by a Moghul emperor in the 16th century. It was a cool place to see and it was amazing to see how well the buildings had withstood time. After that we visited the Agra Fort in the center of town, which was built of the same shade of sandstone. From one of the fort’s terraces I got my first view of the Taj Mahal. It was probably 2 miles away, but it didn’t matter, that first glance was truly spectacular. Let me say that after catching a glimpse, the people in my group got very excited about leaving the fort right away and getting to the Taj. When we made it to the Taj site, there were a lot of souvenir shops selling miniatures and t-shirts and I thought for sure because of this the building itself would have lost some of it’s original luster. I was wrong. When I entered the gates for the site I saw a fort-like surrounding made of sandstone and I kept looking around trying to get my first real look at the building. I made a right turn and walked through a giant arch and there it was. The day was probably wasn’t the most picturesque, the sky was a dull gray mix of fog and pollution, but it didn’t matter. It seemed to actually give the building a completely surreal look; it was like looking at a giant postcard because it is a picture that I have seen so many times. It was so much bigger than I had ever expected, I am not sure of the actual measurements, but it must have been 400 feet tall. The inside did leave a little something to be desired because it isn’t a palace, but rather a tomb with no lighting and no pictures are allowed to be taken once you are inside. The symmetry of the monument was astounding, and everything was perfect crafted. Just to understand the story behind the whole thing was amazing in itself (I won’t bore you with all of the details, but do look it up if you are interested). I spent more than two hours there, and I felt like I could have spent a lot more time there because it is truly a wonder of the world and I found myself completely mesmerized at some points. I was sad to have to leave the place, but it will always be something that I can that I have seen and experienced and it was well worth the trip.
There is a saying about India that says something to the effect of whatever you see in India, you will see the exact opposite as well; Extravagantly rich and deathly poor, beautiful and disgusting, things that seem to fill your soul with happiness and also equally with pain. I found this to be true of my experience of the Taj Mahal and my experience directly after it. After our long day we took a bus back to the train station to head back to Delhi. The Agra train station was one of the most harrowing scenes I have ever come upon. I had to part a group of homeless people just to get in the front door, but it definitely didn’t end there. The station was full of disabled and homeless people who begged for money as their only income. Many of the people had physical deformities that you don’t often see in the U.S., such as polio. A few of the least fortunate had to literally crawl around on their hands to get from place to place and their hands and feet were cracked and bleeding from the unnatural amount of strain and use. Most of these people were adults, which is one thing to see, but then there were the kids. There were three children who must have been living at the train station, their hair matted with dirt and their skin was more grey than brown because of their living conditions. Two of the kids were young, probably 4 and 6, but they were both holding and taking care of a tiny child who was most likely close to two years old but looked almost as small as a newborn. They walked around and asked for food, so my friends and I bought them some food and played with them. They didn’t speak any English, but they were very thankful for the food and enjoyed the games that we played with them. It was almost unbearably sad to see them and to know that they live in a train station. And it hurts me to think about them now because as I am moving on to another country, they are still at that train station begging for food to stay alive.
We spent the next morning traveling to Varanasi, which is one of the oldest cities in the world. The city was founded over 2500 years ago and some of the monuments and buildings have been excavated and are still standing. It is one of the holiest cities for both the Hindu and Buddhist religions. The reason that it is important to Buddhists is because it is the place where Buddha gave his first sermon. This is one of four places that a Buddhist must make a pilgrimage to in their lifetime, along with the place where he was born, the place where he achieved nirvana, and the place where he died. I was fortunate enough to get to visit the site where he preached his first sermon. The whole are had been excavated many years back, and it wasn’t much to look at, but I could tell that this was a very special place because of the way that the people around me were acting. Most of them were dressed in white and sitting in a circle chanting, it was a beautiful thing to see.
Later in the evening, we tried to make our way to the banks of the Ganges River to experience the Hindu cremation ceremonies. As a group, we rented bicycle rickshaws to get to the river, because with the narrow streets and the traffic a bus would have never made it. A bicycle rickshaw is essentially a bike with a two-person back seat for passengers to get around the smaller cities. It’s a lot like what you see riding around Denver after a Rockies game, except not quite as nice. My friend Brian and I decided to ride together, which was a big mistake because we are both pretty big guys and I am pretty sure that the seat was made for two small Indian people, not us giant Americans. We started out with a group of about 30 rickshaws and we were heading along just fine until we made a turn and found out that the Prime Minister was visiting the river the following morning and we wouldn’t be able to attend the evening ceremony. Our guide wouldn’t take no for an answer and told the rickshaw drivers to take a different way to get to the river. This is when the madness began. 30 rickshaw drivers, and I would say maybe 3 of them spoke any English. Ours did not. We found our way into a bunch of different traffic jams caused by the PM’s security, and the rickshaw groups continually split up and dwindled down. After about two hours, Brian and I were completely by ourselves with a driver that knew no English riding through the dark alleys and back roads of Varanasi, India with no idea where to go. Most of the streets look exactly the same because they are all full of people and small shops that all sell similar things. At one point I had to remark that there was no way that we could get any further from home. After a total of three and a half hours, our amazing rickshaw driver found his way back to where the bus was parked. I was disappointed about not seeing the ceremony that night, but looking back, that experience was completely unique and amazingly fun because I was completely out of control.
My final morning in Varanasi, I got up before sunrise and went with the group to the banks of the Ganges River. When we got there, we boarded a couple of boats with about 20 people apiece. We floated along the river and saw the people coming down the steps and bathing themselves in the brownish-grey water that they consider to be the most sacred thing on Earth. There was a solemn feeling in the air, and not much was said by anyone probably because everyone sensed how special a place this was. We went upriver for about half an hour and then turned back and headed towards the crematorium. I saw the smoke from a couple hundred yards away. There was one body that was being cremated when we passed by, with a large column of smoke rising from the body on the sooty steps. The family of the man was standing around grieving (they stay for the entire process which usually lasts 6-8 hours). There was another cloud of smoke rising from the bank of the river, which was from the pile of ashes that were left over from the previous night’s cremations. Two men were sifting through the ashes like miners panning for gold, and when I asked the guide what they were doing he told me that they were doing just that. They were actually sifting through the ashes of the still smoldering dead to try and find jewelry to sell and feed their families. It was the perfect portrait of the poverty that is spread throughout the entirety of India.
On the last day, after some extensive travel to get back to the ship, I visited a disabled children’s home in Chennai. More than a hundred kids from the ages of 6 to 21 were living in the home. The range of the disabilities is pretty evenly split between physical and mental. I spent the morning helping to clean the facilities and painting one of the children’s classrooms. I was able to spend the entire afternoon playing and interacting with the kids in the home. I quickly made friends with a boy named Ashok, who at the age of thirteen was about the size of a six year old. He had a very good grasp of basic English and we talked for a long time about school and the U.S. I played some games with a group of girls and passed out all of the toys that I brought with me (Thanks Corey!). I saved my best toy for my good friend Ashok. I showed him how to use a yo-yo that I brought and he loved it. He was by no means great at using it, but he had never seen one and he thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had a great time playing with all of the kids and at the end of my time there I found out that 10 of the students were coming to the ship with us to take a short tour. The kids were so excited when we got there. None of them had ever seen a ship of that size from the outside, and they thought the inside was amazing. Ashok was actually one of the students that were selected to come with us so I got to show him around. His favorite places were the pool deck and the weight-room. He thought it was incredible when I curled the 30-pound weight. I also took him in the elevator, which he had never seen before. It was great to be a part of his new experiences and I am so glad that Semester at Sea gave them the opportunity to see the ship. It was hard to say goodbye to the kids for the same reason it’s hard to think about the kids in the train station. I may have made an impact on their lives, but it was only for a day and they are now back to the same lives that they were leading before.
India was a complete sensory overload. I had seen it in pictures and on film, but it is something completely different to see the poverty, the over-population, and the people firsthand. And even though I didn’t get much sleep during my trip, it was well worth it because of the things I saw and the subsequent stories that I can now tell. Tomorrow I will be in Malaysia and I am going to take a two-day trip to the capital, Kuala Lumpur. I hope everything is going well back at home and I will write again after I leave Malaysia.

Conor