Dharamshala to Delhi to Agra to Chennai to HOME!

This last week has been… INSANE.
It started on Sunday, July 29th, when I boarded a night bus traveling from Dharamshala to Delhi. I had two seats in the front to myself, since my travel companion got wounded and had to cancel, but then a man from the back of the bus asked to sit with me because he was feeling carsick. The road was windy, and the driver wasn’t taking it slow, so I felt carsick, too. I curled up in weird positions in order to change the angle at which my stomach was rocking back and forth. Within the first four hours, I totally failed to sleep at all, while everyone around me, including the man in the seat next to me, was sleeping like a baby. When we stopped later in the night, I asked him to move to the back of the bus, since I did have a ticket for two seats. He complied, and then I lied down on the two seats like they were a small bed and was finally able to sleep. Thank goodness. I don’t know why, but sometimes my life feels like a constant battle with sleep. No matter how much I sleep the night before, I always find myself falling asleep in classes, for example. And I’m completely, utterly incapable of sleeping sitting up (except in airplanes and in very smooth roadtrips), sleeping on my back, and sleeping in a few other positions.

Delhi and Agra

I arrived in Delhi feeling like a filthy lagoon monster crawling up onto the shores of Hell. Delhi was hot, humid, and horrendous. I had reserved an un-airconditioned room at a small, cheap hotel (about $3 a night), but when I arrived there, it seemed as nightmarish as the streets: the power was out, bathrooms were shared (this was an unpleasant surprise, since my most immediate objective was to take a nice, private shower, and this objective depended on the hotel supplying me with soap and a towel), and the rooms were tiny cells. So I fled this hotel to a much swankier hotel, where I swallowed my pride and reserved an airconditioned room. This room was $16 a night, still cheap by western standards. The A/C was a lifesaver. And the bathroom was private, with soap and shampoo provided. And the room was big and with a large, squishy bed. I had found a small palace for myself to hide from the heat.

After a shower, it was still early in the morning, so I rented a taxi for the day and went to a variety of places: the Birla Temple (pictured above), the India Gate, the national zoo, the Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb, the Lotus Temple, and the Mahatma Gandhi memorial. The zoo was my favorite part of the day!

The next day, which was Tuesday, I traveled by train for the first time in my life to Agra. My goal: to see the beautiful Taj Mahal, a giant marble tomb built by a Moghul leader named Shah Jahan in mourning the death of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. I had read in a book somewhere before that the world consists of two kinds of people: those who have seen the Taj Mahal, and those who haven’t. Now that I’ve been there, it’s true. You can look at all the pictures you want, but you really have to go there in person to fully understand: the Taj Mahal looks like it’s connected to another universe. I’ve heard it described as “floating”, and this is pretty accurate. Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel-prize-winning Bengali poet, described the building of the Taj Mahal as “uniting formless death with deathless form.” After being swept off my feet by its splendor, I ate a thali at a restaurant named “The Food Cafe,” which will forever amuse me, and then I went to see the Agra Fort. This was also a very cool structure.

Other than these two monuments, however, Agra just plain sucks. Millions and millions of people are trying to sell you something and/or rip you off — this includes people offering to be guides, rickshaw drivers, and the salespeople lining the road leading up to the Taj. Right after I arrived in Agra, I took a rickshaw to the Taj, and this was the interaction between the driver and me:
Driver: You’re different from other foreigners… you’re not friendly!!
Anne: That’s because 1. many people I meet in India are trying to rip me off and 2. I’m a young woman traveling alone. It’s nothing personal.
Driver: All five fingers aren’t same. People aren’t same, either. You have to trust somebody. Now, let me give you my tour of Agra. Taj Mahal, restaurant for lunch, Agra Fort… only 300 rupees!

300 rupees really wasn’t a terrible price, but I found this driver so horribly pushy and annoying that I mistrusted him just as if he were trying to get me to pay 2,000 rupees for the tour. So I said no, no, I don’t want your tour.

After Agra, I spent another day and a half in Delhi. During this time, I went to the National Gallery of Modern Art, which was huge and amazing, and to the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, which was fascinating and well put-together. They drew lots of quotes, news articles, and other resources together to create a big picture of her life and the life of one of her sons, Rajiv. Also, they indicate the spot on her sidewalk, pictured below, where she was shot by her two bodyguards. I find Indian history interesting and inspiring. I think for a country that has so recently obtained its independence, it’s doing quite well for itself, although it definitely still has some huge problems, like with poverty, education, and women’s issues… I was especially interested in Indira Gandhi’s memorial because she was one of the first prime ministers as well as a woman — a woman who ruled a very patriarchal country. A huge inspiration for my half of humanity!

Then, after her memorial, I visited the Jama Masjid mosque, pictured below. As of now, it’s the largest mosque in India. Unfortunately, it seems a bit overrun by tourism. I didn’t see much worship or religious activity going on, and maybe this is because there are so many female tourists going around taking pictures of everything in the mosque. Admittedly, I was one of these tourists myself. Tourists who aren’t dressed extremely modestly (like me – my forearms and ankles were exposed) are given these horrendous-looking robes sewn up out of what is probably the fabric that the cloth stores realized would never, ever sell. This means that tourists are easily identifiable in the mosque — just look for the people dressed like clowns. Despite the fact that tourists flood the mosque and dampen its beauty with the goofy modesty robes, they (we..) are definitely a good source of money for the mosque — it costs 300 rupees ($6) for anybody bringing in a camera.

My stay in Delhi ended in a fury when the hotel charged me for four nights instead of three. I only stayed three nights, but I stayed on until late in the day based on broken communication with hotel clerk, who doesn’t speak very good English, and the signs that read “NOON CHECKOUT TIME” and, right below, “10% SERVICE CHARGE EXTRA.” Turned out to not just be a 10% service charge extra — they charged me for a whole extra day. I fussed and fussed and fussed, but also trying to be as reasonable as possible so that they would take me seriously, but they didn’t, and I found no way out of paying. So I gave up $16 more than I should have and told them “I’m not happy. I’m never coming here again, and I’m going to write to Lonely Planet.” (I had found out about the hotel from Lonely Planet.) Of course, I’m not actually going to write to Lonely Planet, but I am annoyed — yet at the same time, $16 is not a huge deal, and the room was quite nice, and the people who work at the hotel probably don’t make as much money as I do (and I don’t even have a job!! I just get a stipend from my school every semester..). So, life went on.

A 33-Hour Train Ride

I went from the hotel, feeling almost as if I had just been dumped, to the New Delhi Train Station, where I boarded a train for the now second train journey of my life — a 33-hour ride from Delhi to Chennai. I was thinking this would be a nightmare. 1. The journey was to be 33 hours long, and 2. just two days before, there had been a fire on the same trainline (Tamil Nadu Express), killing more than 30 people on coach S11, and people in the adjacent coaches had had to leap out of the train windows before the fire spread. I had reserved my seat in second class A/C, which means lots of space, a bed, and A/C, so it was very comfortable. However, this train was extremely bumpy. I had a hard time falling asleep and kept preparing myself to die, constantly expecting the train to derail. Luckily, disaster never came, and time put me to sleep. I managed to read two entire books during the day as the train rattled on, and then after another pleasant night of sleep, that time without fear, the train arrived in Chennai. Hooray!

Chennai, CouchSurfing, and Mamallapuram

Somehow, Chennai (in South India) is currently much less hot than Delhi (in North India), and it’s monsoonless. And much less like Hell, and with dramatically fewer people trying to constantly rip me off. I checked into a cheap, A/C-less hotel (because I’m strong again!), and the clerks, who speak even less English than the guys at the rip-off hotel in Delhi, made their checkout policy clear to me right when I checked in. I hate you, Delhi! And oh, how I love you, Chennai…

It was already looking like my few days in South India would be better than those in the North, but just as a safety check, I went friend-hunting to make my stay even better. I went on CouchSurfing to find some sort of female person to hang out with. Otherwise, my only interactions would have been with hotel clerks, restaurant employees, and rickshaw drivers — which, in India, are men almost 100% of the time. Luckily, I found a young, successful Indian girl, named Suravi, who works for an IT company here in Chennai. She invited me out with her and two of her guy friends for drinks. At first, I was confused — does going out for drinks mean tea or alcohol? I was anticipating tea. They picked me up by where I was staying and took me to a place that, like the Taj Mahal, seemed to be part of another universe (or at least part of a different continent). It was the bar of this hyperfancy hotel, with funky zillion-dollar chandeliers of clear and gold glass and with a security check-in at the front of the hotel. The food items at the bar (things like potato wedges) cost no less than $7 or $8, and the same went for most of the drinks. This didn’t feel like the rest of India I’d seen. Anyway, we each had a Kingfisher beer, and then, sadly, the girl, named Suravi, wasn’t feeling well, so she went home while the two guys and I went out for dinner. At an almost equally fancy place. I had thought it was going to be awkward, but it wasn’t at all. We talked about movies, books, music, family, etc. They insisted on paying and then insisted on dropping me off right at my hotel and then refused to take any compensation for gas. I’m not sure if they are Indians or chivalrous southern gentlemen with disguises and accents.

The next day, I used the advice I had sought from my new friends about how to go to an artsy town called Mamallapuram, just an hour south of Chennai. They had told me where in Chennai to find the bus and which bus to get on. By noon, I found myself in Mamallapuram, looking at the Shore Temple (below) and other beautiful stone monuments from the 600’s and the 700’s. A wonderful, leisurely day and a final bit of site-seeing in this humongous, historically rich country. And on the bus ride back, a young woman sat next to me. We started talking, and I learned that she, too, is a painter. WOW! She’s about to have her first show here in Chennai, and in the next few years, she’s planning to do an artist residency in Portland, Oregon. I got her contact information and told her that she absolutely has to visit me in the States when she’s there.

LEAVING!!!!!

That was yesterday! Today, my last day in India (OH MY GOD), I’ve just been loafing around in Chennai. I hunted down a beauty parlor, where I got a 50 rupee ($1) haircut, so that my grandma won’t be disappointed to see horrendous split ends. I also picked up some nail polish and will be taking a bath or two more than I usually take. This is all in preparation for my flight home (OH MY GOD), which is happening at 1 AM tonight. I want my family to not think that I look disgusting or that I’ve let myself go since the last time they saw me — six and a half months ago. Instead, I want them to think — WOW! Look at our radiant, healthy daughter, enriched after so many adventures abroad! Before I catch this flight, however, I’m delighted to be going to Suravi’s place for dinner. I’ll be going straight from there to the airport. I have to thank her for helping me figure out how to get to Mamallapuram and, more importantly, for making the last bit of my social life in India just spectacular. I will be leaving feeling hopeful and happy.

Thank You!

This means the end of my journey and, therefore, the end of this blog, at least until the next time my life is full of exciting travel again. I want to thank everybody who ever took the time to read this and everybody who thought about me and gave me moral support from afar. Especially you, my dear family! I also feel grateful to the many amazing people I’ve met on my travels. To name a few:
-my Malagasy host family – Zo, Livera, and Abdouline. I MISS YOU!!! I will forever remember you fondly. I hope to come back and visit you someday. I wish you could meet my American family.
-the people who helped me conduct an orchid survey in Southeast Madagascar. Especially — my advisor David Rabehevitra (you made the project so terribly fun, and you were so terribly helpful with your infinite littoral forest flora knowledge), Kathryn Theiss (for suggesting my particular project topic and for giving me support), and the people who accompanied me into the forests so that I didn’t get lost (Give, Marco, Nolan, and others).
-my CouchSurfing hosts in Antananarivo – especially Cecile (for giving me an obsession with guava juice), Tahina (for exposing me to your wonderful artwork), and Marion (for all the wonderful French cooking and for letting me cuddle with your adorable fluffy dog). More importantly, I want to thank you for giving me a place to sleep and for becoming my friends. I hope someday you’ll be staying with me, so that I can stuff you with equally good food and make you feel at home like you did for me.
-the people of Sadhana Forest (I only stayed with you two weeks, but you changed my life. I learned about a more open, gentle way to live with other people and about how to make more humane choices in what I consume. Thanks to you, I’ve spent most of my summer as a vegan and hope to keep this going, at least to a large extent, in the USA. The changes you provoked me to make in my diet will probably increase my lifespan by about 10 years.)
-the other volunteers of Lha Charitable Trust – for welcoming me into your English-teaching community and giving me a wonderful social life in McLeod Ganj. You were some of the funnest and greatest people I’ve ever met. I especially want to applaud Katie Youtz, a long-term volunteer serving as Lha’s volunteer coordinator. Your service is invaluable for the other volunteers!
-MY STUDENTS. You’re the best!!!!! Thank you so much for respecting me, despite the fact that I’m much, much younger than most of you and the fact that I’m not the best teacher ever. Thank you for making me feel like I did a great job. I hope I did an at least adequate job and that you someday achieve the level of fluency you’re hoping for. Thank you for blessing me with katag’s (Tibetan scarves give as signs of respect) and for the multiple home-cooked, goodbye momo dinners you prepared for me. And thank you for inspiring me with your kindness, your motivation, and your strength.
-other friends that I’ve picked up here and there. Especially Seebu, Aadil, and Suravi. Seebu, my woodcarving teacher, thank you for teaching me a new trade, for your advice on how to make a living in the arts, and for showing me where to get art supplies in McLeod Ganj! Aadil, thank you for being a true friend to me in McLeod Ganj, for always being there to talk, and for teaching me about precious stones. Suravi, thank you for helping me out in Tamil Nadu and for sending me away from your country on the right foot.

YOU ARE THE BEST. The most wonderful part about all this travel has been interacting with these people. If I travel abroad again, it will be in the hopes of seeing them again or meeting more people like them. Thanks to them, I never felt homesick – instead, I felt like the whole world is my home.