Friday, November 29, 2013

Wonderstruck

Hi everyone! Right now I'm in Bhopal, and a blog on that will be coming soon. But first, I thought I'd write about my time in Delhi and Varanasi. :)

In Delhi, we stayed at a YWCA hostel - the word hostel didn't do it justice though. Spacious double rooms with private baths! :) The first evening, we found an Irish pub ( in India??? yes and it was delicious) and wandered around some handicraft emporiums in the area. Delhi streets are even more chaotic than those in Bangalore, and I'm getting pretty good at crossing them though I did almost get run over by a rickshaw. It will make crossing 8th Street seem super easy once I'm back at Concordia! Next door to our hostel was a gorgeous Sikh temple, and I was serenaded the next morning by prayers coming from it.

The net day, we visited the American Center, which was an offshoot of the US Embassy in Delhi. It had nets covering the outside to prevent rocks being thrown at it in protest and we weren't allowed to take photos of the building. Just another sign of America's wild popularity on the international stage... We met with a media spokesman who is the brother of a Gustavus professor, who told us about the work they do there.

Afterwards, we took the Delhi metro (super crammed! I hadn't felt so crowded anywhere in India before) to the Gandhi Smriti, which is a museum and memorial at the site where Gandhi was shot. It was beautiful and serene, full of reverence and beauty. The museum was the lovely house he'd stayed in during the last 144 days of his life, and he'd been on his way to a prayer meeting on the grounds in back when he was killed. We viewed photos from his life as well as the few possessions he'd had when he died. His iconic glasses were among them.

That night, a small group of us walked to the India Gate, which is a memorial to war veterans modeled after the Arc de Triomphe. Lovely in the sunset. We ate a DELICIOUS dinner of chapati completed by mango ice cream. The next morning was Taj Mahal day!

Many of the girls and I woke up early to put on our saris, and then left at 5am for the train station. It was a two hour ride to Agra, where we wandered through old city streets and to a hotel that would be our base for the day. From the roof I got my first glimpse of the Taj, immaculate in the morning light. Seeing it up close was even better - it looked like something out of a fairytale. There were people taking pictures of us, but it was mainly out of curiosity at seeing Westerners in saris and not creepy attention. We all wandered into the mausoleum, where there was lovely inlaid marble - set with lapis lazuli and coral and turquoise and malachite. The saris were not all that difficult to walk in, though I had wrapped mine a bit tight around the legs.

After wandering for about two hours, we went back to the hotel. Everyone else decided to ditch the saris, and as I hadn't brought back up clothes I wore the skirt I'd used as a petticoat for the sari, the sari blouse, and a scarf borrowed from Laurel over that. Then, after lunch and more ice cream we headed to Agra Fort.

This was even more wonderful than the Taj to me. The Taj is a tomb, with history behind its construction but not much living history that happened there. It is beautiful but lacking in stories. And Agra Fort was used as a home by many of the Mughal dynasty of Muslim rulers, including Akbar and his grandson Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj. It's also where Shah Jahan was put under house arrest after his son Aurangzeb deposed him. So there are endless stories hidden in the red stones, endless lives lived there - not just of the royal family but of all their servants and soldiers and court. Not to mention that it also had SPLENDID architecture (arches, strategic floor slants and arrow slits for defense, beautiful domes as well) and inlaid marble and beautiful carvings. And since it was less crowded and we were also not in saris, we received less attention and were more free to move about. Utterly amazing.

Our train back to Delhi was delayed and so we didn't get back til 1:30am...I had been awake since 3:30am that morning.  It was rough. To put a positive spin on it, it was a good bonding experience of mutual exhaustion and camaraderie. Uffda.

The next day, after sleeping in, we went out to explore Delhi. Leah, Kyle, Mackenzie, Hannah, and I went to on an adventure to see the Baha'i Lotus Temple. Crowded metro, endless people, but we arrived. After walking through a slum with begging children, we made it to the temple. It was amazing, all white marble and an architectural wonder in the shape of a lotus. But it was a bit jarring after the stark poverty we'd just seen. We attended a Baha'i service, where there was singing and reading from several traditions. The acoustics were echoey and lovely - one singer harmonized with her echo. The Baha'i faith is beautiful, full of peace and acceptance. It felt good to be back in a sacred space.

We left that night for an overnight train to Varanasi, and thus begins another story!

Peace and love,
Malyn




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