Just woke up at noon trying to recover from an action packed five days in India. I think it will be at least a month before I get the smell of India out of my hair, the grime from my lungs and the dirt off my skin.

I woke up at 6am on Tuesday to the smell of India that was looming off shore. We have yet to be greeted by a country with its welcoming beautiful smell. I can’t really describe it but I’ll try. It is like burning plastic and garbage mixed with the greasy smell of an old tractor. Like I said, I would try. We arrived into the port where the water was an oil slick. I swear I could see my reflection in the water. After arriving, which was rather uneventful, I went back to sleep before debriefing and woke up to hear the ship still hadn’t been cleared. The logistics of customs and immigrations in India is more complicated than any other country that we have been too. To leave the port I needed a landing card, Ship ID, copy of my passport, and customs declaration. Just to leave the port meant going through 4 guarded gates, dodging massive trucks, bikes, rickshaws and pedestrians. Like the Dean said IAWA, an acronym meaning India always wins, always.

I had a Service visit to a local YMCA Boys Town planned the first day. We boarded our bus to take on the death defying streets of Chennai. Driving in India is a death sentence. There are no lines in the road and when there are lines they mean nothing. The horn is used often as the driver switches gears just to let the other vehicle know that the vehicle is there. It is ridiculous. Any kind of transportation you can think of you will find in India. The streets are crowded with motorcycles, scooters, bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, small cars, SUVs, small trucks, bigger trucks, buses in all sizes, regular bicycles, pedestrians… I could go on forever. With the amount of interesting, eye opening things I saw on the streets of Chennai, Agra and Delhi there is no way that I could even try to describe it in this blog. Words and pictures just do not even do it justice. Anyway, after we survived our ride to the YMCA Boystown the six of us got off the bus and walked into a large multipurpose room where we were greeted with the applause of over 100 young boys, ages 4 to 15. They were very well behaved, sitting on the floor waiting for arrival. They six of us and the 100 boys sang songs, played duck, duck goose and they even taught us a game. The barefoot, dirty boys live, eat, learn and sleep at boystown. It is like an orphanage where funding provides food, a roof and an education where they are trained in different vocations to prepare them for the intense India. The boys split up into different bunk houses with a house mom and it was evident that an older boy was like the leader of each of the houses. After we left boystown with a large goodbye crowd we had sometime to waste before dinner. I guess it is customary to EAT late here; breakfast around 7am, lunch at 2pm and dinner as early as 8pm. Food is a whole different post in itself- I’ll just say it looks like baby food and is very spicy but most dishes, when I got passed the look of it, tasted good and I haven’t gotten sick yet. (knock on wood) Our bus pulled into the YWCA where we met the president of the YMCA foundation in Chennai. There are over 32 centers in Chennai and over 500 in India! There was a large media crowd gathered where we were given shalls and a delicious western dinner- fried chicken, French fries and fruit. We returned to the ship around 9pm. I still needed to pack for my three day Delhi, Agra and Taj Mahal trip and try to get to bed early because both Lauren and I had to meet our trip at 3am to catch our 6am flight. To our surprise we couldn’t go to sleep because we were so excited.

The alarm went off at 245am to meet our trip. I was in Delhi/Agra/Taj Mahal Group C Bus 2. Try to remember that at 3am! All of my friends were in groups B and D so I had to make new ones. There were 40 people in our group headed by RD Amanda. I met three awesome girls on my bus- Natalie who goes to Chapman and lives in Irvine, Meg from Wisconsin and Courtney. Natalie became my “bus buddy.” We caught a 6am flight to Delhi where we were greeted with our buses and our tour guide who we called “Jay” because there was no way we could pronounce, let alone remember, his name. Our first stop was Qutub Minar which is the tallest stone sturucture in the world. Then we toured Delhi and saw the Iron Gate and Government Buildings. We had our first Indian Lunch at a banquet center before departing for our five hour bus ride to Agra. I slept most of the way to Agra and once we arrived we saw Tughlakaba before getting to our 5 star resort. The resort was like the Montage of Agra and is owned by the Sheraton. We were greeted with a flower lei and a dot was put on our forehead (I didn’t learn the symbolism of that). We walked down the marble entry way to the lobby where I found out that my roommate was going to be Katrina who goes to CLU too! She is a commuter, like Kristin, so I did not know her before the trip. Our room was beautiful. We went crazy when we discovered that we had HBO and MTV, both in English and feather beds!! I slept amazingly well after traveling for 18 hours but our wake-up call was 5:15 am so that we could watch the “sun” rise over the Taj!

Woke up bright and early and boarded our bus for the TAJ MAHAL!!! The call to prayer could be heard from our hotel. Natalie and I, along with everyone else were ecstatic! To get to the gate requires walking down a long street where hagglers try to sell anything and everything. Haggling is also another completely different blog. I believe that I am a professional bargainer now, between rickshaws and salespeople I think I’ve got it down. We entered the gate to the Taj but we had to pass through an archway before actually seeing it. The Taj was breathtaking and gave me goosebumps. It looked fake, like a background to a Hollywood movie. The group was set free and the four of us took hundreds of pictures. A brief history about the Taj Mahal- It is situated on the right banks of the Yamuna river and is made completely out of white marble. The inside of the Taj is a tomb where the Royal Emperor Shahjahan and the first Empress of India Mumtaz Mahal are buried. Shahjahan built to Taj for his beloved wife after she died giving birth to their 14^th child. The entire “crown palace” took 20,000 workers, 22 years to complete. The Taj is described as a “shrine of mystic love.” After watching the “sun rise,” although I don’t think I saw the sun once in India because of the smog, in the morning it just gets brighter, we left the Taj and returned to our hotel for breakfast. At breakfast I met a lovely older couple that are from Texas and part of a tour group visiting the India triangle- Agra, Delhi, Jaipur. After breakfast we checked out of our amazing hotel and toured Fatehpursikri, Agra Fort and then returned to the hotel for Lunch. After lunch we begged our tour guide to stop on the side of a street so we could shop. One of my proudest moments of India, besides bargaining was crossing the street!!! I survived!!! After shopping, where I purchased a light weight shirt, magnet and postcards, we went back to the Taj to watch the “sunset”. The Taj was much more crowded at dusk but still just as beautiful. After visiting the Taj we returned for the last time to our hotel for a boxed dinner and a ride to the train station. The Agra train station is nothing like I’ve ever seen, as mostly everything in India. Forty white people marching to the platform was quite a scene. We attracted beggars, mostly children tapping our legs and arms asking for money and food. The hardest was seeing children with birth defects and mothers holding their babies asking for money and food. If you give them something they will not leave you alone and it just attracts more, like feeding seagulls. Sad. Anyway, we had seen two trains come covering the rat infested tracks and both were jam packed with people standing and sitting. Although standing on a train for 2.5 hours to Delhi would have been an experience, I have to say that when our train arrived with individual seats I was VERY relieved. The train ride was exciting. Natalie and I played cards and I wrote postcards. I swear we ran over two bodies or animals while on the train. Twice we heard large thumps and everyone was like. “There goes another.” That may sound harsh but I learned to not be surprised by anything I saw in India, including dead bodies lying on the street. There were other SASers on our train and we all boarded buses to head the largest hotel in India- the Ashok. The Ashok is also a beautiful hotel. A bunch of us were saying how the cost of this trip could’ve been cut in half if we stayed in different hotels. Our tour guide said that with such a large group it was safer to stay in these high security hotels and when he said that, I didn’t complain and who could, we were in India! Katrina was once again my roommate and I was so tired I don’t remember falling asleep.

In the morning we had breakfast, although I was not that hungry and we boarded our buses again. We were going to visit Humayun’s Tomb, Red Fort, and again, the India Gate. Humayun’s tomb is like a Red Taj Mahal, built out of red sandstone. It is smaller, of course, but just a beautiful. The Ashok had a delicious lunch waiting. All three groups of the Delhi, Agra, Taj Trip had different flights flying out of Delhi to Chennai that day. My bus’s flight left at 7:30pm. We visited the Rajghat where Ghandi was cremated, in a pyre, the M.K. Gandhi Museum where he was assassinated and the Indira Ghandi Museum. The M.K. Ghandi Museum was very moving and emotional. Here a very influential man in the world’s history lived his last 144 days before being shot in the chest to death on January 30^th, 1948 on his way to the prayer room. His bed, glasses, walking stick, eating utensils and paperwork were all there. After leaving the Museum we left for the Indira Ghandi House. No relation to the famous M.K. Ghandi, Indira was the daughter of a Prime Minister in India. She was the first woman prime minister in India and had a very influential impact on India’s development at the time. She was assassinated by one of her bodyguards at the house. Her son then took the position and he too was assassinated by a suicide bomber. After visiting the museums we left for the airport. The security at the airport is much like that in America. There is a male and a female line where you are patted down and then you may enter the terminal. Our ENTIRE flight was SASers! It felt great to be getting back to the ship. As much as I loved India, I have never felt more at home on the ship. I feel so fortunate to be able to call the ship my home. It was, again, another long day of travel.

So I did something in India that only one other student did on the ship! I went to the Dentist! I know, scary, but it wasn’t that bad. Tuesday when we arrived one of my recent fillings was really sensitive. The last time this happened I needed a root canal. A root canal in India?!? SCARY! The night before I was to leave for my three day trip I found the nurse on call. She contacted Medex, the foreign insurance I have through ISE. Medex contacted a dentist in Chennai who could see me and one other student who needed an appointment on Saturday at 1300 hours. Linda, one of our amazing nurses accompanied us to the office. The appointment went well, but finding the clinic and getting back to ship is another story. We left an hour before or appointment because it was 7.5 km away and in India that small distance can take an hour. After our tax driver pulled over and asked three people for directions, we finally pulled up to a nice looking house with a sign that read Dr. Krishna Baba. We walked up to the home where we were greeted by his wife and instructed to take off our shoes. The small clinic had one chair and was very clean. There were two dentist there- an entotontist and a peritonitist. (Not sure how to spell those). I was the first to go and Linda stayed in the room with me. They asked me all these question about the filling. They did not take an xrays but removed my filling with no Novocain. It hurt a little but not too bad. He refilled it and said that my tooth was still alive and I did not need a root canal. Seriously the best thing I have heard in a long time. He refilled it and so far, I’m as good as new. I took pictures!! While the other guy went I talked with the dentist’s wife who told me all about their two daughters who went to school in Alabama and are now married and live in Banglore, south of Chennai. What an experience. I can now say that I’ve been to a dentist in India!!! Haha. The best part about it…it cost 1000 Rupees or $40 US Dollars!! Getting back to the ship was another adventure. Drivers get commission wherever they take you. So when our driver stopped, Linda put her foot down. We got out of the cab and started walking. The driver followed us and kept cutting us off. It was obvious the only two words he knew in English were Maam, No Problem and Yes. Imagine any conversation with just those three words! We found a auto rickshaw driver that took us to Spencers Plaza, a local mall. I have never felt more haggled in my life. I think everyone thinks because we are American we have lots of money and can just spend it! This has happened not only in India, but in all the countries that we have visited. After returning to the ship, I made some phone calls back home to let them know that I still had a tooth and was alive. This is also the first country where I have felt some serious H.S. (homesickness). Maybe it was because of my tooth or the extreme poverty I witnessed, I don’t know. I was REALLY REALLY excited when I returned from my trip to find 8 letters waiting on my pillow. It was also clear that our steward, Andrew, got bored- our cabin was spotless! I read each letter about 4 times before putting them in my Ziploc bag of letters.

Like I said, there is no way that I could describe all that I saw. I think I saw more animals on the street than most zoos. Llamas, horses, holy cows, camels, elephants, chickens, dogs, cats, donkeys… I also saw more men urinating on the streets than I cared to see. Another thing I noticed in India, which may explain the smell, there are no such thing as a trash can on the streets. Trash is swept up into piles and just lit on fire, in the middle of the street or wherever it is swept up. Cow Patties are used as fuel to cook, water is a precious and scarce and food is sold on every street corner. Imagine Tijuana, worse times 1000 with millions more people. Delhi’s population alone is 16 million. India has the second largest population in the world next to China with 1 billion people. That is 1/6^th of the world’s population!

I don’t remember leaving India because I was passed out at about 9pm! With a 1.5 hour time change, Lauren and I woke up to the noon announcements. Today (Sunday) is a no class day so that we can catch up on school work, sleep and staying healthy.

I have a 4 day trip planned in Malaysia to Borneo, an island in Indonesia!

Thanks for all your comments, letters and love! 54 days down, 54 more to go!