Our Arrival in India

I wrote this over a few days when we first arrived, staring last Wednesday.

We're in India! Finally, we were traveling for 32 hours and it was really exhausting, the plane ride from New Jersey to New Dheli was 14 hours. India is 12 and a half hours in front of California and and the jetlag is pretty tough. We are staying in New Dehli for three days and then we're taking a five hour bus ride to Jaipur, where we're going to live for three months. Talking about driving, the streets of India are crazy. First of all the steering wheel is one the right, like the UK. Also, there are almost no stop lights. Cars go all over the place any direction they want. One time I even saw someone going backwards on the freeway! There are tons of motorcycles, rickshaws(bicycles with carts on the back,) and tuctucs(motorized rickshaws.) Not only are there people everywhere, there are also animals. Cows are sacred in India so they're just roaming around on the street. There are also lots of dogs and, a few times, we even saw monkeys on the street.

Yesterday we went sightseeing, we saw a Sikh temple, India Gate, and the Red Fort. The Sikh temple was really interesting. You had to wash your hands and your feet before you entered and you had to wear a head scarf to cover your hair. A lot of the temple was pure gold and it was really cool. The people there prayed to the holy book, that was their symbol of god. At the temple there was a place where anybody could eat for free. Our guide said that around 10,000 people ate there every day. We had a look in the kitchen and there was tons of food being prepared by volunteers. My favorite place was the Red Fort, it was so cool! It was a gigantic red fort that had these huge walls, around the walls was even a moat that used to have alligators and snakes. The fifth mogul of India made it to protect him and his family, that mogul also made the Taj Mahal, and the Agra Fort. It took ten years to build the red fort, from 1638 to 1648. I found it really, really amazing how people can build something like it with no machines, no tools, just their bare hands.

Today I did the craziest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I am dead serious it was just, wow. We walked along Chandni Chowk. I know you have no idea what that means, but you can't even begin to imagine it. Chandni Chowk is one of the biggest and oldest markets(and in my opinion, craziest) in New Dehli. The sellers sell a lot of things, anything from goat and chicken heads to pants and sandals. It really is pretty freaky to see bloody goat heads on the street. Surprisingly though, that's not the craziest part. It is a really busy market so you can't walk two feet without a motorcycle almost crushing your foot or a rickshaw almost bumping into you. It's like playing dodge ball, but with a lot more balls and instead of soft stuff, motorized vehicles. There is also a lot of poverty. There are people laying on the ground asking for money at every block. A lot of kids are also going around and it's really hard to see, but you can't just turn a blind eye and pretend it's not there. Of course you also can't always be in skock, there needs to be a balance. I think that was the hardest part, seeing all the human injustice. When we got to the restaurant that we were going to, everybody was pretty shaken up. I think it was a good experience though because that's when it really hit me how much injustice there is and it really makes you want to do something about it, which is what this trip is about.

Tomorrow we're going to Jaipur! I hope that there we can finally get a routine going.