Lucknow to Delhi to Chennai

January 12, 2010

So I promised at the end of the last post I did about India to tell a bit more about the dance party. This is a LONG story, so I've only put a few pictures at the end of the blog, and they aren't even really that cool or important. THIS is the meat of the update today. So to start with, it was at the girls dormitory on campus. They had dinner prepared for us and a HUGE bonfire outside, so we ate with the girls and then went outside. During dinner I sat next to two girls who I'll refer to for the rest of the post as RJ and EM because 1) I don't remember their actual names and 2) that's what I associate them with.

EM was an English major (get it?) and so her English was very good-she was on the quieter side but it was very interesting talking to her, seeing as how I myself am an English major. RJ? Well that's what I call her because as I was talking to her somehow the subject of my family came up. I was describing how music "runs in our blood": my Mom was in drama and musicals in high school, my grandpa can play seemingly dozens of instruments, my sister has an incredibly beautiful/powerful voice, and of my four brothers and myself, only one has not really shown interest in playing guitar (and the other four of us are not bad at it if I do say so myself). My dad plays guitar too, but at the end I just threw in what I thought was a throwaway line that my mom always says about my dad: "Everyone tells him that he's got a voice that he could have used as a DJ or something on the radio"

Now RJ's English wasn't quite as good as EM's, so while I could tell she was following I could also tell that she wasn't getting 100% of what I was saying. However, as soon as I said that my dad could have "been a disc jockey" her eyes lit up. And I mean LIT UP. I was a bit taken aback, actually lol. "A radio jockey? Your father is a radio jockey???"

Turns out her life's ambition is to become a radio jockey (or RJ)! And no matter how many times I tried to explain it, I just couldn't communicate that my dad was not actually a DJ but only could have been one. I didn't quite know it, but I had myself a problem.

We finished dinner and everyone went out to the bonfire. There were perhaps 200 girls gathered around it. I mean, just everywhere. We weren't quite sure what was going on, but any doubt or confusion vanished immediately when "Barbie Girl" by Aqua came blasting over the speakers: we had been lured to a dance party (I say 'lured' because our professor knew what was going on but hadn't let us know the full picture lol).

Now first a note about the girls: all of them were undergraduate students, so between 18 and 24ish years old. However, many of them were from villages or areas where they hadn't had the best access to a constant food supply. This meant that a large portion of these 18-24 year-olds looked as if they were 12 (they simply hadn't had the nutrition/diet to grow much). So that was really, really weird. The term that most of us guys adopted later after reflecting on it was "cognitive dissonance"-our eyes were telling us that these girls haven't hit puberty but our brains are telling us that they're our age and university students. I'm shaking my head right now remembering lol.

So these girls were RIDICULOUS-three of them came up to Adam, one of the graduate students from our group who has a wife and a three-year old daughter (not that the girls should have known that or anything), and told him "We're the three dirtiest girls here..."! Zack had a stalker who followed him around for the first half an hour or so and did some dance moves that you have to have him act out for you in order to get the full effect, and I had RJ and EM.

Now there were only 12 of us total, so we moved around quite a bit over the course of the party. We were either dancing with a group of about 12 girls for every member of our group or taking photos. I must have been in seventy pictures or so that night-and I'm NOT exaggerating. It was like a chain reaction-you'd pose for one photo with a girl and then all her friends would want a picture, then some of them would take a group photo with you, and then it'd start all over again. It was actually nice though cause we got to take a break from dancing haha.

Despite the fact that I kept moving around, RJ was always there with EM in tow. She kept bringing me back over to her group of friends. All of the girls were eager to teach all us guys dances that we assume must have been dances that only women dance in India (judging by the giggles and tittering that we all elicited). But RJ was getting to worry me. At one point, with me right there in front of me she said a couple sentences to one of her friends in Hinglish (a hybrid of Hindi and English that most Indians speak) about me: I knew it was about me because she kept gesturing towards me, I caught the words "radio jockey" and "father" (among others), and she pantomimed fainting at the end...lol

I actually started trying to slip away from her, using other girls who wanted photos and other things as excuses. She kept following me though, and actually called me out on avoiding her after the fourth time or so! haha

This all hit a crescendo for me at a point where RJ, EM and I had taken a break to talk for a bit. I had been talking with EM about what sorts of books she liked and other English-majory stuff for maybe a minute and a half when RJ, who had been standing there impatiently, rounded on EM and basically yelled at her in a string of Hindi and pantomimed zipping her lips closed. I didn't catch any english in there, so I asked EM what RJ had said.

EM thought about it for a second and then told me, "To put it simply, I like talking to you but she likes looking at you."

The specifics of the rest of the dance party kinda blur together: just more of the whole dance-then-take-a-break-for-photos routine. But that translation/comment by EM is what really sticks with me and summarizes the night for me. Ri-dic-ulous. Retarculous even!

So the next day, January 12th, we visited some English and History students in their classes at Lucknow University. Here's a bit of the campus:

Very nice, actually. It was funny-one of the history students asked one of the members of our group who the first emperor of America was lol

Our last stop in Lucknow was a building built by Claude Martin, the guy whose house is now the school with the cannons from last entry.

It is a government agency now: the CDRI.

or Central Drug and Research Institute.

From the roof.

This is a little Hindu shrine next to the guest house that we stayed in.

Some of our group going back to our rooms for the last time.

From Lucknow we were supposed to fly to Delhi and then fly from Delhi to Chennai. However, we almost missed our flight because Zack and Adam's things got locked in their room! What followed was the equivalent of watching the Keystone Cops: about six or seven people from the guest house tried various methods of removing the lock by force from the door. We finally got everything together and made it to the airport on time.

The sack lunch that the university gave us. From bottom-left clockwise: bread, potatoes, and a delicious sugar doughnut-thing (there was also some mutton that came with them).

And that is the rest of January 11th and the 12th. We arrived in Chennai at about 1 in the morning and spent the night in the Radisson near the airport.

Later today: travelling from Chennai to Mamallapuram! the sun returns from it's prolonged absence! the beach!

Lucknow: Days 2 and 3

January 10 and 11, 2010

I figure I'll just do one combined blog post instead of two separate ones to catch up!

So on the 10th we were in Lucknow and touring the sites (if you hadn't caught on yet, this was standard operating procedure for us: travel, see sights lol). Lucknow is an interesting city because the Muslims in the city are mostly Shi'ites, so the mosques we visited were noticeably different than all the ones we'd seen previously.

Even the exterior looks a bit different from all the previous ones.

Yet another baoli. This was probably the biggest one we saw though, because this is just the ENTRANCE to it! there's another whole section behind the gate there.

Our group descending into the step-well.

The interior of the well-proper.

The inside of the mosque was ridiculously colorful! the lime-green paint and weird bluish lighting were jarring compared to the rest of the mosques.

The aforementioned blue lighting.

Ok, this was pretty darn sweet. This mosque had a labyrinth on the roof! (Alas, it did not have a David Bowie...) So it was cool to spend a half an hour or so just climbing through the different passageways and trying to find our way in and out of it!

Similar hallway, different lighting.

The roof of the mosque.

This was the interior of another mosque that we visited-these chandeliers are donated from all over the world. I think the green one is from Japan and the white one on the right is from England (I can't remember where the others are from...)

Our guide in the mosque standing alongside a feature that we only really encountered in lucknow-miniatures of other mosques and buildings displayed inside the life-size ones. They're something along the lines of mini-shrines...

We also visited some of the British buildings in Lucknow. This is the site of a major siege during the Indian uprising in 1857 where the British were besieged by Sepoys who had switched sides and were fighting for Indian independence.

We went boating on the river that runs through Lucknow, rounding out our methods of travel (we now had air, ground, and water transportation under our belt).

Waiting to board the rowboats and see the river.

There was a shrine just sitting out there in the middle of the river. Pretty neat.

One of the boats from our group WAAY behind us-the poor guy rowing that boat 1) ended up with the most and physically largest from our group and 2) was the oldest of the rowers. So they took just a bit longer to make the same journey our other boats took.

The Chief Minister (basically Governor) of Uttar Pradesh is a Dalit, or Untouchable. Her name is Kumari Mayawati, and her political success is seen as a symbol of hope for other Dalits. This is a picture of a city that she's literally building from scratch for other Dalits so that they have a place to live that they are accepted and not discriminated against. They have a little stream that EVERYONE, Dalits included, knows is just tap water. However, Dalits will make pilgrimages from around the region and around the country just to come here and take some of this glorified tap water back with them: it's sacred to them.

In addition to an entirely new city, Mayawati is building statues of herself all over the place. She has been confronted about the seeming vanity and pretentiousness that this implies. Her response is, "I build statues of myself because I know that no one who comes after me will build them." Quite the sobering thought.

Just couldn't resist taking a photo of the menu at the restaurant we ate at that night...lol

On the next day, January 11th, we continued our tour of Lucknow.

More British buildings in the city.

I really liked the open top to this tower.

This used to be the house of a man named Claude Martin-it's now a school.

With cannons! lol

This is actually a picture of a picture. They had a room where they had posted photography that some students had taken around the campus. This is from the roof of the building and really stood out to me!

Some Lucknow-style tombs.

So beautiful and picturesque.

We basically had the afternoon to ourselves, so Zack and I went with one of the students from Lucknow University (Siddarth) and two of the girls from our group to explore the city a bit more. It was awesome going with Sid because he was able to get us discounts on everything and knew a lot of the local hotspots and flavors like this:

This is Sukha Aloo Tikki. It's basically fried potatoes in a yogurty mix and is perhaps one of the most delicious things I had in India! My mouth is watering just thinking about it... :)

When we got back we had the craziest experience of the trip. It's almost beyond words. The administrators from the university arranged for us to have dinner and a dance party with the girls from the university....needless to say, things got ridiculous VERY quickly.

The next day was basically us travelling from northern India to southern India, so I'll save my particular crazy story as an "exciting opener" for the next blog update. However, I WILL say that I don't think I've ever been in so many photos in the span of two hours or so in my life! I only managed to get my camera out and have someone take a picture of me once over the course of the evening, so I'll leave you with that picture from the evening:

Tomorrow: what exactly was so crazy about the dance party??? Well i'll tell you! Plus one or two more sites before jumping on a plane and heading south to Chennai!

Lucknow: Day 1

January 9, 2010

Got a shorter update for tonight because (I don't know why, but) blogger has been giving me troubles tonight. First it crashed my browser multiple times when I tried to upload photos to just not letting me upload them at all. That's ok, since there were only like 5 from this day anyways.

We slept on the train and were woken up by a very special man. Let me set the stage though. Some of us had JUST referenced the skit from Trigger Happy TV where...well let me show you:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PHqdz-g8tQk

(You're gonna have to copy/paste since they disabled embedding on that video)

So anywho, we had JUST referenced that cell phone in the library skit the previous night when lo and behold a guy in our car answers his phone by saying

"Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?"

"Hello? Hello?"

"Hello?"

It's funny now, but at the time it was INCREDIBLY annoying! And please ask me or Zack for our impersonation of this guy, because just reading the text can't really measure up to the severity of the situation haha. And this guy got a call every 5 minutes where the same thing would happen!!

"Hello? Hello? Hello?Hello?Hello?Hello?Hello?"

Gah!

Anyways, we got to Lucknow in the middle of the afternoon and spent the rest of the day at Lucknow University settling in, meeting faculty, and planning out our schedule for the next few days.

If I have some time when the photo updater is working again I might come back and retool this post, but all you guys are missing out on is some pics of the inside of the train, the campus of LU, and some puppies. I took like 5 pictures on this day...i.e. not very many.

Tomorrow: PICTURES!! (hopefully...)

Agra: Day 2

January 8, 2010

For our second day in agra we wanted to hit as much as we could in the time that we had remaining, so we started nice and early and headed out to the first location. It was really funny because the whole time Norbert had been functioning as our tour guide. Everywhere we went there were locals who, a la Slumdog Millionaire, offered to give us tours and who probably had NO idea what they were talking about. They were super persistent everywhere that we went, but this day was the absolute worst.

It started with a group of touts (that's what they're called) at the first palace we visited who tried to get us to pay one of them to guide us around. By now we were familiar with the drill and explained that Norbert was our guide. However, these guys tried to pull a fast one on us: they informed us that no less than the Supreme Court of India had made it illegal for any foreigner to lead tours. This was (obviously) a heaping pile of drivel, but you have to admire the way they really tried haha.

It was amazing that (at least for the first part of the trip and excepting the Taj Mahal) every place that we visited was just more and more impressive. We visited site after site and were continually just blown away by what was built there.

This is the center of a room that is supposedly where the Mughal Emperor would sit and place representatives from four different religions in the corners. The five of them would have religious debates. A pretty cool legend even if that's not what they really used the room for (there's not really proof either way).

One of my favorite things of the trip: this may not look like much, but it's actually a life-size Parcheesi board! (for those of you that don't know, Parcheesi is a board game that's basically the grown-up version of Sorry! or Trouble!) The Mughal emporer and whoever he played against would use their servants as pieces and make them walk around the board to represent the pieces. SO ridiculous haha

I had just discovered the "macro" setting on this camera, so I made sure to get some up close and personal shots of the intricate carvings-keep in mind that this is all carved into rock. Pretty darn impressive.

I just can't even wrap my brain around how much time carving this would take!

Patterns everywhere.

As you can tell from the pictures, I can say with confidence that this was definitely the foggiest day of the trip. You could barely see across courtyards to the other side of the complex.

Some pretty cool fortifications-I like how the tower kinda melts into the fog.

The carvings on either side of the gates used to be elephants (I think...either that or some sort of griffen things...)

We visited the big mosque in Agra and were surprised to find a Suffi shrine inside the mosque. Pretty trippy (but cool).

The touts here were vicious. When we walked into the mosque they very quickly and efficiently managed to cut us off from one another and work on us one by one. They had a good cover story too: when I told mine that I didn't need a tour guide and wasn't going to pay him anything he said that he was a volunteer and had worked at the mosque for the past ten years or something like that. I felt like a terrible person for assuming he had an angle but basically kept alternating between ignoring him, telling him to leave me alone, and simply saying "jao" (which means "go" in Hindi). He finally wandered off in search of easier prey and I got away. Not everyone was so lucky.

Various members of our group were pestered for money and basically dragged to the gift shop (which they referred to as a "family carvings store"). I guess it wouldn't have been so upsetting if 1) we hadn't been dealing with it for the whole day and 2) it hadn't been in a mosque. I mean, that's like someone trying to sell you car insurance in a church. Totally irreverent and just annoying. But whatever-we made it out of there eventually and weren't too much worse for wear (just frustrated).

I loved the pool that was in the middle of the courtyard. Definitely added to the whole atmosphere.

The Red Fort in Agra. This isn't even the main gate. Cool factoid: most of the ancient Mughal fortifications are still army bases used by the Indian military. So the main gate is off-limits and the majority of this fort is closed off to the general public. But they still let you see some of it :)

Can't really explain why I liked this photo...just did!

One of the huge wooden doors. Kinda unremarkable until...

You get a good look at all the carving on it!

The platform in the middle of the picture here is where the Mughal emperor would appear every morning to crowds of thousands of people who all got together and waited for him to show up. If he did, everything was ok. If he didn't, then something was seriously wrong. Kinda like a perpetual groundhog's day...lol

Couldn't stop taking pictures of hallways and arches and (especially) hallways with arches.

During all the travel time during the day I read my second book in two days: The Great Partition by Yasmin Khan.

That night we went to the train station and got ready for a twelve or so hour train-ride to Lucknow. They were sleeper cars, so it's not like we were stuck in chairs the whole time or anything. The train was nice and late: it was expected at either 10 or 11 pm, but we didn't get on our way until about 3 am! That's not so bad though-we heard people talking about a train that was delayed 72 hours... (I don't even know how that's possible... =P)

And so we were on our way to Lucknow...which most of the people would identify as the "lowlight" of the trip. Me? I didn't think it was so bad. But there were definitely some fun circumstances that we had to deal with during our days in Lucknow. So tomorrow: getting to Lucknow! The MOST annoying guy on a cell phone ever. Settling into our accommodations at Lucknow University...and not being too excited about it... And, as always, delicious food!