Well, I made it to India! Here's a sign to prove it.
We landed in Delhi around 9:30 pm July 1st.
Here are my thoughts so far: India is a crazy, crazy place.
We spent our first day in Delhi and the second in Agra.
This blog, covering only 2 days, will probably be the same length as a blog that covers a month!
The first crazy thing here is the driving.
The lane lines seriously might as well not exist.
All of the traffic laws are mild suggestions.
Every time I get in a car, or auto rickshaw, I can't help but think about how my dear mother would probably have a heart failure. Indians honk their horns a ton, but it isn't really in a rude or angry way like it is in the States. Here it is simply a form of communication, a way of telling someone that you're coming up behind them and they should probably move. The really insane thing is that we have yet to see any wrecks!
Here is the room I stayed in in Delhi.
The next day we woke up bright and early and explored Delhi.
This is one of the many different temples to be seen in Delhi. I think this temple is a Jain temple, but I could be wrong. We did visit another Jain temple in Delhi and while it was beautiful inside, it was very sad.
My first rickshaw ride!
Scenes from a rickshaw:
The rickshaws took us to the Old Spice Market. Up until this point, I hadn't thought Delhi smelled bad at all, which was the opposite of what I'd been told by many people. But walking through that Spice Market was extremely assaulting. India truly assaults all of my senses.
The view from the top of the Spice Market was awesome though.
This is our team. There are two Indians in this picture that aren't part of our team though. The girl, Lavanya, actually goes to Clemson for grad school and is a friend of mine. She lives in Delhi and came home for the summer to visit her family. It was really awesome to see her and she was incredibly helpful in getting around the city. The man is a random guy we kind of surrounded while trying to cram into a metro. We asked him if we could use his phone to get in touch with Lavanya, and he ended up staying with us in Delhi the entire day. He was pretty helpful too.
Here are the girls on our team and Lavanya.
From left to right: Katie, Heather, Marie, me, Lani, Lavanya, and Olivia.
After the Spice Market tour, we took rickshaws through some of the old streets of Delhi. Each road basically had a different theme of things that they sold. One street sold shoes, another sold items for wedding bazaars, etc.
The amount of wires on every street is insane. It's like a wire jungle. I assume it's probably dangerous and not super efficient, but those adjectives apply to a lot of things in India.
India is so extremely colorful.
And pretty overwhelming.
Here are the guys on our team at lunch.
From left to right: Logan, Jared, Rico, and Josh.
Newsflash: Selfie sticks have made it to India.
A picture in the metro with Lavanya!
So the metro was CRAZY. Our first ride, we ended up crammed in with a ton of Indian men. It smelled horribly, it was hard to breathe, and honestly, it was a little bit scary. After we met up with Lavanya, she told us that there are two cars devoted solely to women!! Those cars were oh so wonderful. Those women only cars made me love India.
Our first day was a very long and hot one.
When we came back to the flat we were staying in, the cold floor apparently felt real good.
The next day we left the flat at 6am and loaded into a bus for a 3 hour ride to Agra.
Here are some scenes from the bus ride:
This is a pretty common site.
If you can't tell, these are basically make shift tents that people live in on the side of the street.
Apparently Delhi's got rides!
So, for those of you who don't know, Agra is the city that the Taj Mahal is in.
When we pulled up, we saw our first camels!
We hopped in a golf cart of sorts and headed to the Taj.
This is one of the first things you see when you go inside. I think my favorite thing about this picture is the family posing in the bottom left corner. If I remember correctly, they're one of the reasons I took this photo.
And there she is.
Don't worry, I took a ton of pictures of the Taj Mahal from various angles.
The story of this place is very interesting. Short version: the emperor had this built as a housing site for the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. We did actually get to go inside it but we couldn't take any pictures once inside.
The kids here are so stinkin' cute!
There are more pictures that I took of random people's kids coming, no worries.
I know this is stereotypical, but because of that very reason, I just had to.
This is a view from the Taj Mahal looking back at where we were standing.
Americans are not a common site here, especially 6'2" men that look like Jesus.
Consequently, we've all experienced people stopping us and asking us to take pictures with them, but Logan has, by far, gotten the most attention.
After the Taj Mahal we went to a marble factory where we got to see how they make this stuff.
The process is truly amazing.
They take a piece of white marble and cover it with a pink dye that will wash off. Then,
using their ring finger, they take a sharp tool and carve shapes and patterns into the marble, which they can see because of the dye. They have different colored stones imported from all over the world. They shape these stones and then place them into the carved out parts. They melt something that turns into a liquid and then use it as both a sealer and a glue. Then they wash off the pink dye and this is the end product:
How beautiful is that?!
This is the same process that was used to make the flower designs seen on the Taj Mahal.
The place also had a replica of the Taj Mahal that 2 brothers made. It took them 10 years!
After the marble factory we got back in the van to head to lunch.
See this man sticking his arm in our van? He's trying to sell us stuff.
This is one of the most common things we've experienced so far. It is a daily occurrence and it's exhausting. They come up to us, bang on the windows of our vehicles, all but come into our van, etc. It's hard for me because we've been told to ignore them, not make eye contact, etc. It's just hard because all I want to do while I'm here is get to know the people that live here, and I haven't really gotten the opportunity to do that yet. It's definitely a hard line to try to find.
This is the restaurant we ate in.
I just really love the name. And the tag in parenthesis.
Agar was also the first place we saw monkeys.
Our van driver pulled over and threw crackers out of the window to them. Some of them kind of hogged the crackers and just crammed them into their mouths without stopping. If you look closely at this picture, this monkey has a ton of crackers in it's cheeks, neck, and throat. We were dying laughing.
Here's what a monkeys face and neck should look like.
Even though we were all really tired, we stopped at Palika Bazaar on the way home.
It's basically an underground market with really cheap kurtas.
As Marie is clearly exhibiting, we hit the jackpot.
One of the stores in the underground market was playing some American music and Josh started dancing. And by dancing, I mean slightly head bobbing with some knee bending thrown in. Before we knew it, we were surrounded by 100 Indians. It was unbelievable and hilarious.
On the way back to our flat we passed the famous India gate. This is a poor quality picture, but we did indeed see it. Even though it was from our bus, here's the proof.
These are some pictures from the rooftop of our flat on the morning we left Delhi and flew to where we'll be spending the rest of our time while here in India.
Every day in Delhi we left the flat at 6 am and went all day long until around 9:30 or 10.
These days have been full of new experiences and excitement.
I still am not totally sure what the days to come will hold, but I am so ready and excited for them.
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