Delhi: Day 2

January 4, 2010

So here we were after our first night in India ready to see more of the sights that Delhi had to offer and really dive into our experience there. After breakfast at the kitchen in our guesthouse (which was SUPER cheap-about 20 rupees, or less than 50 cents, for naan bread, a spicy and delicious potato soup, and chai tea!), we headed out. We took auto-rickshaws to our locations for the day. If you don't know what auto-rickshaws are, I took a video of one of the rides. This is one of the tamer rides: the more exciting (i.e. more dangerous and seemingly life-threatening lol) ones were at once terrifying and exhilarating, frightening and adrenaline-inducing.

Our first stop was Humayun's Tomb. Humayun was the second Mughal emperor and ruled parts of northern India in the 16th Century. His tomb is a huge complex that was pretty incredible.

This is just one of the outlying buildings and not even the main event. It's a tomb for another person and not Humayun himself.

This is a picture from the roof of the building in the previous picture-the building in the background is a mosque. The archway of the center opening is the next picture.

Even after centuries and centuries, some of the original tiles and decorations are still there on the buildings. Everywhere we went, the intricate details of all the different monuments were just amazing-so much care and dedication went into the construction of all of this.

Walking towards the main building (the dome visible just over the top of the gate).

On the way some of the girls in our group stopped to chat with some schoolgirls who were there on a field trip of some sort. Norbert (our professor) warned us that while the women in our group were free to talk with the girls it probably wasn't a great idea for us guys to talk to them. We therefore waited off to the side as they talked.

More outlying buildings-you really get a sense of the scale with the itty bitty people in the picture haha

Everywhere we went they had these step-wells called baolis. Basically they're HUGE wells that have steps in them so that when the monsoon comes they fill up. As they slowly empty over the course of the year you have easy access to the water-just walk down the steps!

Grayson walking down the aforementioned steps. Again, the scale of these things was pretty crazy.

Some of our group looking down into the well.

Humayun's tomb. Kinda evocative of the Taj Mahal in the sense that the Taj Mahal is the pinnacle of perfection in this style of architecture. Humayun's tomb, magnificent as it is, is just a step on that gradual development towards the Taj.

Pretty neat symmetry :)

Our next stop was a sufi shrine (the white building) which sat in the shadow of a mosque (the red brick building). Women aren't allowed into the shrine itself (and neither are cameras). So while the guys in our group got to go into the shrine, the ladies had to stay outside.

This is a Sikh temple. Sikh men are almost instantly recognizable: they wear turbans and have full beards. We got to go inside for a bit and observe one of the prayer rituals in progress. I wrote in my journal (that I bought later this day) about an experience I had during that ritual:

"We were sitting inside as they conducted their prayer rituals and I looked around. My gaze settled on a little girl who couldn't have been more than three. I found myself wondering if she was going to heaven or not and about the seeming 'injustice' that she was born here and doesn't have a choice in what she's taught. As I thought about it and [about] her a deep and profound sadness settled over me...it was a pretty powerful moment."

This trip really opened my eyes to the need that there is for the gospel, in India and (by extension) everywhere. God definitely was working on my heart throughout the course of the trip.

A pool of holy water that they have nearby. People will regularly walk down and dunk either parts or all of themselves in the water.

Everyone has to cover their heads inside the temple-they provided some head coverings for us.

Our group barefoot and wearing the matching head coverings.

Lodi Gardens-basically more tombs. They're all over the place there!

Close up the detail just jumps out at you.

I found the inside of this dome to be particularly interesting-all that white stuff is bird poop. How exactly it got up there I'm not sure....lol

Dinner! This was some sort of chicken tikka wrap. "tikka" is just the style of cooking or oven or something. For the whole day I spent about 130 rupees, or just under $4, on food. This was the day that I started really enjoying Indian food (didn't take long at all haha).

So that was the second day in Delhi! Tomorrow: MUCH more modern temples and a really old, really tall pillar!

Delhi: Day 1

January 3, 2010

Within ten minutes of arriving at the airport in Delhi early on the morning of January 3rd I had already had one of the most impactful and powerful experiences of the entire trip. After disembarking from the plane we were about to get in line to go through immigration. A few of us decided to use the restroom before waiting in line. I went into the restroom: nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I went to wash my hands. There was a short man standing by the paper towel dispenser, glancing around every once and a while but standing pretty still overall. I thought it was a bit weird or different but was going to just ignore it and go about things as normally as I could with a guy watching me wash my hands.

When I had finished washing my hands I went to get a paper towel from the dispenser. However, as I reached for them the man standing there shook his head and said "No!" to me. There I stood, hands frozen inches from the paper towels and not entirely sure what was going on. After a few awkward seconds the man grabbed several paper towels himself and placed them into my hands. I dried my hands and walked out of the restroom more than a little confused.

It wasn't until I was outside that I realized who exactly that man was: a Dalit. However, at the time I didn't know that term. The only term I knew for someone in his position was something that might be more familiar to you: Untouchable. This man was a man that the rest of Indian society deemed worthy of nothing more than a life of handing people tissues to dry their hands. This is a job so low that other Hindus and Indians won't even do it for themselves. Instead, they have a member of the lowliest caste do it for them.

It was a sobering realization, to say the least. We made it through customs and onto the bus that took us to JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and, ultimately, the rest of the trip, but that first experience has definitely stuck with me. The caste system is technically unconstitutional, but in practice it's alive and well in India.

The rest of the day was spent touring Delhi: we went to the Red Fort, a Jain Temple, walked through the alleys in Old Delhi, and visited the Jama Masjid (the largest Mosque in India!). I'll let the pictures take over from here, with just a bit of caption/commentary from me where I feel the need to add a bit :).



A view of the Jain temple across the street from the Red Fort.



The entrance to the Red Fort. Note the bunker complete with a soldier manning a machine gun.




Some of our group walking around in the interior of the red fort. As you can tell, it was SUPER foggy the whole time that we were in Delhi.



This door and the steps leading up to it caught my eye.



This guard was packing some serious heat. I made sure to take the photo when he was looking the other way.



Our first stop for food in India and I got paneer curry. "Paneer" is hindi for cheese, so paneer curry is curry with cubes of cheese in it. This particular dish was about as tasty as cheese cube soup sounds-i.e. not very good. HOWEVER, it was mostly because it was fast-food-y and not a good sampling of it. By the end of the trip, I was ordering paneer dishes left and right because they're delicious.



The gate to the Jama Masjid dominates your view as you approach the mosque. The building itself is built on the highest point in Delhi, so you have to make a pretty serious climb just to get up the steps leading up to it!



The view of the street and market from near the bottom of the stairs leading to the gate.



The main event. Truly an impressive building.



Zack, Grayson and I climbed one of the minarets and this was the view. It was surreal to be gazing out across the city like this-it was DEFINITELY the perfect place to go on the first day of the trip!



View of the courtyard below. In this picture you can see the metal grate that they had encircling the platform thing we were on so you couldn't fall. It was still pretty crazy up there though-there were probably fifteen or twenty people crammed up there in a space that was legitimately not even as big as a dorm room. The sardines in a can analogy is about as close as I can get to describing it.



So that was the highlights of the first day in Delhi. We went back to JNU and spent the evening settling into what would be our homes for the next few days and got ready for more sights, more sounds, and more India the next day.

If this were a trip that Indiana Jones took to India, today's entry would be what happened during the montage while the red arrow bounced around from city to city before finally stopping at the final destination.

So what did I end up doing for our 20-odd hours of time in the air? Read, read, and read some more.




Mikie had lent me "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning and so I started in on that. Something that I immediately noticed was Manning's incredibly frequent use of allegory or quotations from other sources. It seemed like only about half the book was his own words...not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but it was just one of the first things I noticed.

I also read Mark's gospel during the flight-I'm closing in on completing Don's challenge to those of us from the True Joy STP this past summer to read the New Testament by the weekend of the Navs Conference and Mark was next on the list for me.

They served us several meals over the course of the flight, and although I didn't think I'd ever encounter airline food that I'd really really enjoy Singapore Air proved me wrong: pretty much everything was delicious (AND included in the fare).

I also slept, but that's pretty boring...lol. January 2, we hardly knew ye.

Next time: Finally in India! Some actual pictures! Thoughts on food and group dynamics! And other such things requiring exclamation points!!!

And Away We Went!

January 01, 2010

Here's where I begin my recounting of my three-week sojourn halfway around the world in India. These first three entries will be on the shorter side and be mostly comprised of details about our experience flying, seeing as how I didn't take any pictures until actually arriving in India. Also, we lost a day on our journey to India. You see, the whole trip only took about 24 hours, but on account of jumping the International Date Line we left on January 1st and arrived on January 3rd. In other words, we time-traveled into the future!

So I started the new year in the air, headed towards a foreign country for the first time ever. That's right, although I'd been fairly well-travelled within the contiguous states I hadn't ever been even as far as Mexico or Canada! So this was quite the departure (pun...well, honestly: intended lol) for me. We flew Singapore Air out of LAX with a stop in Tokyo to refuel and Singapore to switch planes before finally arriving in New Delhi. But we'll get to that :).

Going through security I went through the first of my many run-ins with customs. I made the mistake of tossing my toothpaste in my carry-on instead of the bag I checked...silly me! So i had a nice gentleman unpack my bag and explain to me with a slightly empty look in his eye (as if he'd done this way too many times) that toothpaste just isn't safe to allow on the plane. That's actually about all the explaining he did: no elaborate scenarios about how I could combine the fluoride and other chemicals in my Crest oral-hygiene-paste with something to create an explosive or weapon of some sort...probably so I wouldn't get any ideas haha. Anywho, after the slight delay we were free to wander around in the airport until our flight left.

We boarded the plane and took off without incident: we were on our way.

Next time: a list of things I occupied myself with during the flight! Thoughts about Singapore Air! The harrowing account of our mysterious crash and what happened during the years between our disappearance and my return as part of the Singapore Six! Oh wait...maybe not that last one (go watch Lost if you don't get it!) :D

Just a few photos

I just posted some of my favorite photos to my facebook account. You can view them here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033383&id=1047780051&l=a4b4557347

One Month Later: Blogging about India

So I'm back in the good old U.S. of A as of today, the 23rd of January 2010. I know there are those of you who will want to hear all about the trip and I'd love to tell each and every one of you guys everything that happened to me and zack and everyone else on the trip (as long as you don't die of boredom lol).

However, the prospect of telling and retelling and telling and retelling the same stories to different people already has me a bit daunted, and even if i did that there's no way I could possibly communicate just how amazing the trip was in 15 minutes of conversation with all of you guys individually. So, while I'll still respond to questions about how the trip was and post a (VERY) small portion of the 1200+ photos that I took over the three weeks to my Facebook, I've decided to supplement whatever I tell you guys in person and the photos I post to Facebook with more here on the blog.

What exactly will this look like? Well i figured that since internet access was pretty spotty during the time that I was in India and I couldn't upload photos from there even if I had wanted to, I would blog when I got back instead of during the trip. So during the days of February 1st through the 22nd or 23rd, I will update this blog a minimum of once daily with photos, journal excerpts, and stories from what happened exactly a month ago. This way it'll have the effect of an unfolding story and all the information will come in (hopefully) manageable chunks!

I don't expect it to be the easiest thing in the world, but I like that it's a goal I've set for myself and an easy way to let multiple people hear about what happened in India. So check back often during February, because I'll be busy relating just what I've been through in the past three weeks :).

As a last thought, I'll put up the very first picture I took in India. This is the view looking from the Red Fort in Delhi across the street to the Jain Temple: (I actually didn't notice the bicycle rickshaw in the foreground until I looked at this picture on my computer monitor instead of the screen on the camera lol)

More to come in the near future!

India-bound

This:

is currently my desktop background. SO excited...and now that I'm almost done with finals, it's getting to be more and more of a reality every day.