India Travel Journal

This essay was submitted to RIT as part of my application for admission.

In February of 2006, I decided I was going to spend a month traveling India.

Over a period of three months, I prepared, buying my airplane tickets, obtaining my passport, visa, and immunizations, and making the necessary vacation arrangements. I decided on a departure date of May 1. The last week before departure naturally was a whirlwind, especially with final arrangements made with my instructors, arranging for early exams. My departure was actually before the official end of the semester. I wanted to avoid the harshest of the summer; though I later felt the resulting academic issues weren’t worth the extra week or two. Regardless, May 1 came around and I boarded the Boeing 777 that would carry me halfway across the world. Fourteen hours later, I was in Delhi. After a late dinner at two A.M. local time and some sleep, I woke up at eight o’clock and was ready to start.

Continue reading "Epilogue" »

Posted by sean at 12:14 AM | Permalink

I have returned to Philadelphia.

After arriving in Delhi, I took the metro to the airport, where I planned to check my bags and do some last-minute sightseeing. I found that I could not enter the airport more than three hours before my flight. Not about to drag all of my items across Delhi, I retired to the Radisson hotel and had lunch and used the buisness center, after which I returned to the airport and boarded my flight.

For the past month, I have been surrounded by people at all hours of the day and night. When I got back into Philadelphia, it was quiet, and felt strange, including my own neighborhood. Even Center City feels empty. There is no constant din of horns blowing, shouting, and loud autorickshaws sneaking through traffic. No crowd of shops and people spilling onto the sidewalk. It's the opposite of where I've been. Everything is neat and ordered.

When I move about, I remember being there in the past, and the steps and turns I take are familiar, but everything seems new, almost like I am experiencing it for the first time. It took several seconds before I recognized my bedroom as being "mine."

I know that I haven't added entries for Jaipur and Jaisalmer. I will add backdated entries for them in the next few days, as well as expanding existing entries.

Posted by sean at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The train to Amritsar arrived four hours late. At least this ride was mostly devoid of children. After walking around for a bit, I settled on the Hotel Grand, a rather nice hotel with air conditioning, a restaurant, and an inside courtyard. After some lunch, and a brief rest, I went to see the Golden Temple.

The Golden Temple is amazing. When you enter, you have to take your shoes off (stored in a nearby cloakroom), wash your feet in a small pool, and cover your head with a piece of cloth.

The outside of the temple is a square walled structure, with entrances on all four walls. Built into the walls are shrines. There is a large pool in the center, in the middle of which lies the Harmandir, the most sacred part of the shrine. It is externally covered in gold. All the interior walls are covered in inlay. The second floor opens in the center above the central worship area on the first floor, with musicians and clerics. The roof has another worship area in the center, with men and women kneeling and chanting. There will be no pictures of the interior, as photography of the inside of shrines is not allowed.

It's really all I had time to do. I got back to my hotel around 7:00 pm, too late to hire a taxi and go out to see the nightly India/Pakistan border closing ceremony at Wagah. And since very few shops or restaurants open until noon (Why? Noon is when it starts to heat up.), there was no point in trying to do anything before I had to go to the train station to catch my 2:20 pm train to Jaipur.

Posted by sean at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mumbai was a rest point, where I slept most of the time, got my laundry done, did some other "housekeeping" tasks, and overall spared myself from an unbroken train ride from Kochi to Amritsar, the next stop, where I will see the Sikh Golden Temple.

This last day in Mumbai is going to be very long. My train does not leave until 10:30 pm, and since I am unwilling to pay another 1500 rupees, more than I have paid for any other hotel, for the use of the room until then, I will be spending several hours at the Mumbai Central train station waiting for my train.

Before heading out to the station, I had breakfast and stopped at the Cafe Mondegar for some beer before going to the Gateway of India and the post office.

Now for a few words about beer in India.

Continue reading "Mumbai, and Indian "beer"" »

Posted by sean at 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One thing that I noticed almost immediately is that Kochi, as well as the rest of Kerala, is a hotbed of Communist activity. Hammer and sickle symbols are painted everywhere and are on all of the political posters. Kochin is also rather wealthy compared to the other places I've been. There are a lot of multi-story shopping malls, with upscale stores, and fewer street-level shops.

When I arrived at my hotel on Sunday, I slept for a while, since I slept very poorly on the three-day train ride from Delhi, largely due to children shouting and climbing all over the compartment.

On Monday I went to Fort Cochin, but wasn't able to do much. I did see the Chinese fishing nets, though they were not in use and I couldn't get any fresh fish cooked like I've read about. The restaurant I wanted to eat at closes their kitchen during the afternoon, and I had to return to Ernakulam to book the tickets for the full-day backwaters tour I planned for Tuesday. Since the last ferry from Fort Cochin to Ernukulam leaves sometime around 9 p.m., after booking the tickets I would have had less than two hours to do anything in Fort Cochin, and I would be at risk for missing the ferry. With an expensive rickshaw ride back to my hotel waiting at the end of that prospect, I remained in Ernakulam.

Continue reading "Kochi" »

Posted by sean at 04:47 AM | Permalink