Blog Title: India

In India, I met my dad in Delhi and we went to the Taj Mahal. The first day we got to Chennai, I went out and found some internet and then packed and went to the airport. My flight was supposed to leave at 8:40 pm but it was delayed over an hour. I guess this is pretty typical for India. I made it to Delhi around midnight and Dad and I went to the hotel and checked in. We ended up stayed up talking for a couple hours. The next morning we got up and went to the train station and took a train from Delhi to Agra. The train station, specifically the railroad tracks, was disgusting. People went to the bathroom on the tracks and littered a lot. We took first class, which cost like $7. The ride was around 3 ½ hours and we sat with an Indian family. They has a little boy who was 10 years old and they were all really nice. They talked to us and asked us about Semester at Sea and what we were doing in India. The little boy had a cell phone and he showed me how to play the Sims 3 on it. We also met a guy sitting across from us and he was from India but he lived in Hong Kong for 4 years. It was fun to meet them on the train. We got to Agra, checked into the hotel and went to see a show. The guy on the train from Hong Kong recommended that we see this show about the Taj Mahal. The man’s wife died and he built the Taj Mahal for her. It was kind of boring and the acting was bad but there was some cool Indian dancing and that’s exactly what I wanted to see so I was happy.
The next morning, we went to see the Taj for sunrise. Everyone kept telling us to go for sunrise so we did. The taxi driver picked us up at 6 am and by the time we got in and through security, the sun had already risen. Nobody made it in before sunrise so I thought that was kind of dumb. The Taj was really pretty and basically what I expected. We had a tour guide that our taxi driver provided for us. I hated him. He was so annoying! We didn’t even want a tour guide but our taxi driver told us we needed one. The guy just wouldn’t shut up and he was full of useless, boring information. I really didn’t care and he wasn’t informative. On the plus side, he did take pictures of us so Dad and I got some pictures together. My iphoto isn’t working though so I can’t upload any. We went inside the Taj and there wasn’t much in there. There were the tombs of the man and his wife and it was intricate but there wasn’t much else.
After the Taj, we went to the hotel, showered and checked out. We hired the taxi driver for the 2 days we were there and I told him I wanted to go find some markets and go shopping. I wanted a magnet and find a painting. He took us to some really expensive stores with $600 carpets and $200 paintings. They weren’t even really paintings. I was starting to get mad because I wanted cheap touristy stuff. Next he took us to a jewelry store and I got really mad. I refused to go in. I had heard that the taxi drivers do this. Apparently it’s pretty common. They get commission by taking tourists to their friends stores so sometimes drivers will make a detour from where they’re supposed to be taking you and take you there to shop. Fortunately that never happened to me but it happened to a lot of other people. I eventually gave up on the painting and just wanted a magnet. We ended up finding one and then I didn’t want to shop anymore because I was annoyed so we decided to go ahead and drive back to Delhi. This taxi driver was supposed to drive us but then he told us that someone else was actually going to take us. We were again mad because he lied to us but it ended up working out. It was almost a 5 hour drive back to Delhi and we checked into the hotel once we got there and went to sleep. The next morning I had to fly back to Chennai and Dad went home.
The next day, I went on a Semester at Sea trip to a college. We spent the day with the Indian college kids and talked with them and they performed dances and sang for us. It was interesting to talk to all of them. We sat in a big circle and just talked for a couple hours. We had lunch with them and then went to a woman’s home for a home visit. She was really well off and her house was very nice. It was cool to see someone’s home in India. She showed us around and served us some snacks and then we went back to the ship. India was really dirty and extremely poor, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I had heard terrible things about India so I had really low expectations but it was ok. I had also heard that it smells really bad and it did smell but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I enjoyed my time in India but it’s not somewhere that I really care to go back to.