Sunday, March 6th, 2005- Chennai -> New Delhi -> Agra

I woke up at 3:45am and met in the Union at 4:30am in preparation to go to Northern India. We took our 2 ½ hour flight to New Delhi where we met our New England Patriots wearing tour guide, Janesh. We stopped at a hotel for an early lunch and had my first meal in India, Nanh, which is similar to a warm pita. We then went through New Delhi, which had many cows roaming the streets, to the train station. We were all loaded into our second class seats that were basically two benches facing each other with a bench hanging from the ceiling to sleep on. The windows were open with bars over them and the ceiling fans blew hot air on us. As we started, people would walk through the compartments trying to get money. There were people who worked for the train trying to sell food and drinks, other random people tried to hawk spices and little plastic toys, and lastly there were beggars asking for money. I later on also found the bathroom on the train that just so happened to be a hole in the floor of the train.
The three hour ride took us through villages and fields. The one constant was the tons of trash all along the tracks. People just throw their garbage off the train. Our guide told us that this is due to the lack of education. Less than 50% of the country is illiterate and most people that live in rural areas never go more than 50 miles from their home in their lives.
We arrived in Agra in early afternoon and fought our way through the beggars to the bus. We then headed to the Taj Mahal to see the sunset. The place was mobbed with people but still gorgeous.
We then headed to our hotel for dinner and heard about a place called Sadar Bazaar. Amanda, Katie, our theater teacher Professor Fennema (Doc), and I went and found out that at 8pm there were only three stores open, which were of course department stores. To give you an idea of how hard it is to leave once you get to one of these places; there were three girls that just followed us to the area and when they decided they wanted to leave, none of the rickshaw drivers would take them back to the hotel as sales people tried to get them to go to the other stores.
We eventually got back to the hotel and I just relaxed. It was pretty funny because some of the only things on the TV were the movie American Pie and last months Pay Per View Wrestling. Of course I watched a little bit of both, that was until the cable went out.
Random Stuff
- Agra has a population of 1 million people.