Writing about India is one of the hardest things ever. How do I describe an experience in which you have to go through to truly appreciate and understand? An entry like this is one which only someone who has been to India can relate to. Just sayin’…
Just want to start off by saying that my expectations from India were not very high in the first place. Let me re-word that…it was the port in which I was least interested in going and complained why they would give us 6 days in India when we only have one in Singapore. When you think of India living in the US, what comes to mind? Smelly, clearly the first thing you cringe at. Crowded, with the population 3 times of that in the United States. A Dirty, garbage covered, unfamiliar religion based, insane driving, completely different culture based country located on the direct other side of the globe from that of NYS. And this is exactly what it turned out to be…and through this I fell in love with India, and in a very very very different way from Cape Town, it became my number one favorite port we have visited thus far on our itinerary. Shocker.
It’s currency exchange rate time!!!! So pay attention please. $1= R45 RUPEES. I love Rupees. They are my second favorite currency for 2 reasons… Number 1) everything seems so expensive at first when you hear the price in rupees then your like “oh dang that’s actually cheap” .. like… “that meal was good and filled me up, but was not worth R100” then I realized I got a fantastic Indian lunch for hardly over 2 bucks. Number 2) the word Rupee is the best, especially when Indian people say it. My number one favorite currency is the Cedi’s out of Ghana because we have a stupid joke where everything costs 5 Cedi, like “you want help on the homework?...5 cedi.” Get it? Good. We had preport for 2 days as opposed to just the night before in preparation for India because there was so much to cover. Everything from food and protecting ourselves from sickness to cultural norms and getting around the country safely. They made India out to be far more intense than it actually ended up being for me. I mean, Semester at sea plastic wrapped all of the carpets throughout the ship and closed the top 2 decks for the entire time we were in port for god’s sake.
Sunday March 6th, 2011
Our first day in port and nothing to do but explore India. We decided to get one major cultural experience out of the way right off the bat. We attended the Cricket World cup. Honestly what are the chances of that. The event happens once every 4 years and we happen to dock in the exact city, in the exact country which was hosting a game being played between South Africa and England(S.A. being a country I had visited just weeks before) Crazyness. Cricket is like an unnamed religion in India, is the way the interport students described it to us. Bigger than the great game of Hockey in Canada or Football in the US, everybody plays backyard cricket in India. We got off of the ship, hopped into a rickshaw on the street and head off to the game…before I go on I need to talk a little bit about Rickshaw’s:
They are the freakin sweetest mode of transpo ever. Look them up online if you don’t know what they are because they are too hard to explain but here is my brief description…3 wheeled tricked out yellow go karts with roofs and rear seating for 3 crammed people. These crazy Indians whip them around the streets without a care in the world. A line of cars does not matter because rickshaws are little and can just weave in and out like a motorcycle, which also fill the streets. The driving in India is way crazier than any country I have ever been to before. I had been to P.R., and thought driving could not get much crazier than that, then to other tiny Caribbean islands and thought the same thing…then Ghana came around and it was even more stupid and crazy driving…India blows them out of the water. I can confidently say this time I don’t know if I will ever be to a country where they drive as wild as they do in India. No stop signs and only traffic signs on the absolute busiest of corners. I could probly count the traffic lights on two hands in the city of Chennai and 8 million people live in the city. Lines in the road? They don’t matter. Signaling for turns? Doesn’t happen. Being able to negotiate a price to somewhere before a ride in which the Rickshaw driver is actually happy with at the end of the ride? Impossible. They always wanted more money. Those Indian scams would trick a nube traveler, but not myself. I have many vids of the rickshaw driving in India and at this point im afraid that is the only thing that can do it justice.
Let me get myself back on track here. Cricket. The Chennai stadium we were in was pretty awesome, Looks exactly like a baseball stadium except more spread out and perfectly round….I won’t get into too much detail because no one actually knows/cares about cricket in the US and would not know what I am talking about. Although not the most exciting of events in the world, a cricket match is something which I felt I needed to experience of watching in person, and that I can now cross it off my list. We left after about 2 hours into the 9 hour match.
After the match we drove around town for a while looking for the best Indian cuisine. Semester at Sea dropped us off on a Sunday…apparently local food is difficult to find on Sunday…we ended up going to a hookah bar called Elementz and having pizza and Panini’s. Hookah bars are easy to find in India because all Indians smoke hookah; it’s a huge part of their culture and offered everywhere.
This first day had been great. Nothing but exploring around a brand new city which may as well have been a whole different world. The last thing we did before returning to the ship was go to Spencer Plaza. It was basically a buttload of every sort of Indian shop piled into a decent sized mall. A place you can certainly spend a few hours shopping and walking around but not exactly the Indian cultural experience I was looking for. We spent about 2 hours there looking at all the fabric and native clothing in there before leaving back to the ship.
After eating and getting a change out of our very sweaty dirty clothes, just Matt and I headed out to explore the nightlife of India. Just Matt and I became the theme of my entire time in India because we basically traveled alone throughout the next 5 days. Traveling with one other person is the best way to go about getting things done quickly and efficiently. I hate more than anything going in a large group. I want to scream. I always feel like I am trying to herd a bunch of cattle from location to location. It’s a slow process and some girl(not in a sexist way or anything but in reality let’s be honest…these are college aged girls we are talking about) is always complaining about something and bound to slow me up…it’s an aggravating feeling and one I want to avoid as much as possible on this voyage. Annnyyywhhooooo Matt and I jumped in a rickshaw at around 2000 and just went. The nighttime driving even more enjoyable than the day so a half an hour ride to the hotel we were going to did not bother me one bit. After a few enjoyable beers on the top floor of the Accord Metropolitan hotel(with a cool breeze and a great view of the city), Matt and I jumped in a rickshaw and headed towards our next destination. Completely random but at about 2200, a decently far distance from the ship, suddenly I spotted one of my best friends from the ship Aaron Kaufman standing on the street corner standing with Bruno and Tom. I yelled for our driver to stop and we picked them up. This does not seem significant but it was just the weirdest thing ever how I spotted them basically in the middle of nowhere. We continued with 5 people(6 including the driver) in the rickshaw back to Elementz where we had eaten lunch earlier. Word on the ship is that people were going there to hang out that night. Cool. For lack of anything better to do we ended up staying there the rest of the night just hanging out and talking about our first day in Chennai. We almost went to some club where they had a dress code, but I was wearing shorts…Matt and Aaron gave me a hard time about it all night saying how they wanted to go and could not go because of my stupid decision to stay cool on a hot Indian night. I convinced some kid on SAS I had never talked to before to switch pants with me. After changing and surprising Aaron and Matt with my new find, they told me the club was now closed. Not worth it. Uneventful night led to a ride home with 7 people and one driver crammed in a rickshaw meant for 3 and a driver. We gave each other “wet rickshaws” the entire way back to the ship. Matt’s rickshaw was behind us and ran out of gas. They got back to the ship an hour and a half later. Sucks to suck.
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