Spring 2015 - Day 59: India
Meeting at 3:45 in the morning means we are given a boxed breakfast. Boxed lunches were famous on my last voyage for being notoriously bad. Well, half bad. The fruit was always tolerable and we would get a capris sun to drink. But they always gave us a hardboiled egg and a cold chicken leg and that was just weird.
Unsurprisingly, there was a hardboiled egg in my boxed breakfast. I avoided that but I enjoyed the muffin, the capris sun, the cereal, and the apple.
Once we had all checked in and they made sure we all had our passports we got off the ship. Even though we were with a big group we were still hounded by the taxi drivers.
The bus that we got on was really nice, the seats were large and very squishy. Falling asleep for the hour and a half bus ride was easy peasy. I was actually disappointed when we arrived at the airport.
The airport was not like any airport I have ever seen. It was just a one story building. It looked like a building that would house some stores at an outdoor mall. It was tiny and brick. It had a little sign at the top that designated it as an airport.
We gathered outside of it and representatives from the tour company handed out folders that contained our itinerary. I was in line to enter the airport when I realized i hadn't gotten my ticket. They were handing out manifests with our name highlighted to serve as proof that we were booked on the flight.
Once I had that I got back in line. At the door to the airport they checked our passport and the manifest.
Once we were inside the airport we had to go over the ticket counter to get our actual tickets. One of the airport employees had them all in a stack and was calling out names. We had to show our passport in order to get our ticket from the guy.
These two steps, entering the airport, and getting our tickets, took a really long time. There was 80 of us just on my trip and there were three other trips at the airport at the same time. Our flight was at 7:00 so we were pushed through first.
Once we had our ticket we got in the line for security. We had to show our ticket and our passport to get into the line. When we reached the front of the line we had to show our passports again. While standing in the security line it got to be 6:15, which was the time we were going to start boarding. Hopefully they wouldn't leave with out us since half the plane was still waiting to go through security.
At the front of the security line they gave us luggage tags for each of our bags. We had to have one per bag. We then put our bags through the x-ray machine. After we went through the metal detector we were separated by gender for the pat down. I gave her my boarding pass and passport and she waved me down with a wand and then felt me up. She then stamped my boarding pass twice and gave it back to me.
When I got my bags back they had stamped each of the luggage tags with a stamp that marked it as inspected.
Once Jessi and I were through security and wanted to go to the bathroom but the board of departing flights said that our flight was boarding. The room of gates was only about the size of my gym from high school so it wasn't very hard to look towards our gate and see that it was, in fact, boarding. They were ushering people onto a bus.
I gave my boarding pass to the woman at the door and she scanned it and then gave it back to me. Then two security guards standing at the door behind her checked the boarding pass she had just successfully scanned, and checked to make sure both of my bags had inspection stamps. Then I got on the bus.
The bus took us to the plane. They checked our boarding passes at the bottom of the stairs to go up to the plane, ripped off a part, and then gave it back to me. Then I was finally on the plane.
I have never had my ID or boarding pass checked so many times. It was a bit absurd, but at least they were thorough.
I had a window seat. I settled in, took out my kindle, and waited for take off.
The flight was pretty unexciting. I read Harry Potter and slept the entire time. Even though it was a 2 hour flight, it went by really quickly. I definitely slept for way longer than I thought I did.
When we got off the plane we rendezvoused with the tour company and our busses and began a full day. It was only 9:30 am by that point and it felt like it should be the middle of the afternoon.
Our first stop was Qutb Minar, the tallest minaret in India and the tallest brick minaret in the world. Or something like that. This was the beginning of the theme of our trip: "the largest _____ in Asia." Or the world, or India. Everything seemed to be record breaking. Eventually we stopped believing our tour guide when he said things like that.
According to wikipedia it is actually the second tallest in India but it doesn't say what the other one is made out of so maybe it isn't brick and the Qutb Minar actually deserves its title. But it's definitely not the tallest in the world so I don't even know why I believed him in the first place.
The first ever mosque was built on the property of the minaret. The minaret was built by a king to celebrate a victory over Delhi. He only was able to build one story and then he died. The work was carried on by various other people and each of them wanted to leave their own mark on the minaret. The minaret is divided into four sections, each built by someone else with slightly different architecture. The bottom section is curved and pointed, the second section is just curved, the third is just pointed, and the fourth is completely smooth.
There are minarets on the top of one of the main buildings at my University. This minaret looked nothing like those. But the complex was beautiful and had many lovely trees and old ruins of the mosque.
We didn't spend very long there and were soon back on the bus and on our way to the biggest mosque in India.
On the bus our tour guide told us a little about life in India. The biggest problem that they currently have had to do with farming. There are more and more people and so land per person is starting to shrink. People are then wanting to move to the city but their isn't enough housing so they end up living in shacks or shanty towns on the side of the road.
Towns and cities in India have both a Hindi and a British name. So Delhi is the British name and Dilli is the Hindi name. Bangalore's Hindi name is Bangalooloo.
Visiting the mosque required us to be completely covered from head to toe. Since most of us weren't we were given robes when we got there.
Many people in Old Delhi will go to the mosque every Friday to offer a prayer. According to their religion, Islam, if you miss three Fridays in a row deliberately you will go to hell.
Mosques are always built facing mecca. So in India they are built facing the west, in the U.S they are built facing the east. Most mosques have roofs but the one that we visited was built using a different kind of architecture that included an open courtyard.
The city was designed with an octagon wall around the entire thing with the mosque in the center on a hill.
There are 5 musts of Islam:
- One god
- Pray 5 times a day
- Part of your income (2%) must go to charity
- You must participate in ramadan, the month of fasting
- At some point in your life you should take the pilgrimage to Mecca
Why is Mecca so important? It is a city that was a junction of trade routes and so was the most important city in the world at that time. At some point Mohammed went to Mecca, conquered it, and converted all of the people to Islam. This influx of people really got Islam off the ground an solidified it as a major religion.
At the mosque that we visited there is supposedly a single hair from the beard of Mohammad. The hair is orange and so most people who visit Mecca will color their hair orange so that people know that they traveled there. It also shows their love for Mohammed.
This mosque is very popular because a man who is a descendant from Mohammad comes every Friday to lead the prayer.
The mosque was lovely. I really enjoyed our visit there. Although it did feel like I was intruding on someone's prayer time. I mean, I wouldn't go somewhere that is primarily catholic and visit a church for fun.
Well, I guess that isn't true. We visit Notre Dam cathedral and other major cathedrals around the world. Ok, that thought makes me feel better about it.
I think the mosque was more beautiful than most of the churches I have been in. It was made mostly of white marble and had intricate carvings all throughout it.
We were given 15 minutes to walk around and then we gathered on the steps outside of the mosque. We sat watching the traffic right outside the mosque. The road that we had come in on was very, very narrow and completely full of people and bikes and cars and cows. Our bus had a hell of a time coming down it when it dropped us off at the mosque. We ended up getting out and walking the rest of the way because moving down the road in a huge bus was taking forever. It was also annoying everyone because we took up the whole road.
While we were sitting on the steps waiting for the buses it started to thunder and lightning right above our heads. When the bus was halfway down the road and in our sight huge drops of rain started to come down on us.
We decided it was best to meet the bus halfway and we all went for it. It was an interesting journey because we had to dodge the cars and cows. A few of us came within an inch of being sideswiped by a bus. A bus that was barely moving but we ma had to jump out of the way between a bunch of parked cars. It was certainly an adventure.
We made it on the bus only slightly damper.
I didn't really pay attention on the bus and all I heard our tour guide say was that we were now at Ghandi's memorial. It was raining even harder so he told us to just run and look at it and then he would tell us about it back on the bus.
We we all got out and walked through the rain. It ended up being a pretty far walk and it just kept raining harder and harder. By the time we were on our way back to the bus it was pouring rain. We were completely soaked and running to get on the bus.
It was like we had all jumped into a pool. We were all drenched and we all embraced it and had a lot of fun. We were in India in the pouring rain!
Back on the bus some people changed their clothes but I decided that we were probably going to walk in the rain again so I just rocked the wet look.
Our next stop was the biggest Sihk temple in Delhi. Sihkism is another religion. To be a Sihk you must have the 5 ks.
- Kesha: hair, a mustache and beard.
- Kolor: a bracelet
- Konga: a comb
- I missed this k-word but it means Bermuda shorts
- Kurban: a curved knife
I have no idea how serious this list was but one of the tour guides was a sihk and he had all of those things.
To go into the temple we had to cover our heads. We went into a room where we could keep our shoes and get bright orange bandanas to wear. Right before the steps of the temple was a shallow pool that we dipped our feet in to cleanse them.
The temple was gorgeous. It was completely made of white marble with a gold dome on the top. The inside had a center section that was also all gold, with a shrine like area in the middle.
People gathered around the gold area on the carpet to pray.
We made a full loop around the outside of the gold shrine area and just observed what they were doing and what it looked like. In the center of the gold area, the center of the shrine, was a book, and people were laying flowers all around the book.
When we arrived outside the temple, the sun was setting and I took beautiful pictures of the sun setting over a pool just to the left of the temple. Once the sun had set we went back to remove our bandanas and get our shoes and then we trekked back to the bus. On the way back to the bus it started raining and I was glad that I hadn't changed clothes after getting soaked.
Our destination after the temple was the hotel. It was a quick drive, only about 5 minutes. We were to eat dinner at the hotel but dinner was served from 7 to 10 so we were allowed to go at whatever time we wanted.
We got to the hotel around 6 but it took almost 40 minutes to get us all checked in. My roommate was Sarah and eventually we were able to get our key and go up to our hotel room. It was small was lovely.
What was not lovely was that we had to pay for wifi. You could get it in different time increments but the best deal seemed to be the 24 hour one, even though we would be at the hotel for no longer than 10 hours.
I went to the front desk to find everyone in line to buy the wifi and we all sat at dinner in silence on our phones. Generally this would be very poor etiquette but when your moments of internet are scarce and you talk to the people around you all day long, it become less rude to sit on your phone all throughout dinner.
After dinner Jessi and I sat with Phillip for a while in the hotel bar. Phillip was on a different program but it seemed that many program were staying in the same hotel at once.
I eventually retired to bed, we had to get up very early to catch a train for Agra and I didn't want to be dead in front of the Taj Mahal.
