I finally landed in India, the place I’ve been dreaming of coming both because of its diverse and profound cultural and spiritual heritage, but also its economic and political muscle in the global scene. (I love the word Chindia by the way- two of my favorite countries squeezed into one word :) Besides, India was also a suitable place to test out my travelling survival skills that I learned from my Dragons trip this fall. As I pushed my baggage out of the airport, a random old Korean guy who was a high school teacher struck up a conversation with me, and although I did not really want to stay with him, when he asked if I wanted to share a taxi with him and maybe share a room at the hostel, I reluctantly said yes. I tried to find cheap hostels to stay at, but because it was close to New Year’s Day and it was weekend, most hostels had their rooms sold out and I had to stay at a rather expensive hotel (900 rupees a night per person for a double). Then I went out for a little snack and there were a lot of juice places and curry places on the street so I ate curry and juice. One of the rickshaw drivers also treated me to Indian Chai which was nice, but I don’t think India Chai is real tea. I miss my good old Chinese tea. I took my first run in India to celebrate my safe arrival, and I ended up nearly dying. Traffic in India is the craziest out of all the places I’ve been to and ran in the world. In Delhi, there were no middle lines to divide the two directions on the road, and there’s ceaseless honking and shouting that just drove me crazy. Cars, bikes, rickshaws and even cow carts were on the road and there weren’t even marked pedestrian paths- I wonder how many traffic accidents India gets every year. Although I did come close to dying, I know how I survived- thanks to Hindi power! I think God really loves me in terms of allowing me to experience various different expressions for worship. While running, I saw this weird looking (I don’t know how to describe the building- I wish I had brought a camera with me but too cumbersome to run with a camera- but it was a temple with a triangular roof). It was around 6pm on a Saturday night and it was so interesting to see them worship. When I walked in I saw first the main goddess to whom the temple was dedicated too, and there were also a lot of other statues of other gods including Shiva. To the left, there was a little yoga meditation place and at the basement, there were gods made of black marble. People bowed to the main goddess and received a basket of candies and sweet fruits, and I was told I should take it home with me to eat. The priest-like person also stamped a red dot on my forehead, and an Indian guy explained to me that it was a sign of protection from God- which explains how I managed to dodge all the crazy traffic while running. After running about an hour and fifteen minutes, my legs were pretty dead but I did not know where I was. Luckily I found a Delhi metro stop and found my way back to the Karol Bagh Station I was staying at. Indian metro is probably one of the nicest and cheapest way to move around in India. Taxis and rickshaws charge ridiculous amounts (I think especially more for tourists), and it was nice to have a cheap transportation. (But I’d experience later absolutely packed metro in Kolkata where it’s so crowded that I couldn’t even get off at the station that I needed to get off at)
The next day, I headed out to the Old Delhi to visit the Red Fort and an Islam mosque that was the biggest one in India. I got a ride to the city by a rickshaw first, to learn how I can most cheaply get back to the airport and also get more information about travelling in India. The driver was honest and I only had to pay 10 rupees to get to the center of the city, which was about twenty minutes. But the next rickshaw driver was rather obnoxious, as he said 5 rupees initially and later changed the price to 5 US dollars which is about 200 rupees. So I just got off the rickshaw on the road and walked away. The Red Fort was pretty amazing, with its grandiosity and intense red color. I could not help being reminded of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and this analogy is pretty close as the Mughal Emperors lived in the Red Fort. There was also a museum inside with the exhibition of some of the artifacts from the Mughal Empire, and it was interesting to see that under a prominent emperor Hindus and Muslims coexisted in peace (unlike today) and even the architecture of the time reflected this harmony with elements from both Muslim and Hindu architecture. Then I visited the mosque and it was cool to see so many birds hanging out at the mosque as there were bird food strewn all across the floor. It happened to be Sunday and I also said a short prayer of gratitude to God inside the mosque. I had an interesting driver on my way back to the airport, and he told me: “oh we Indians love peace and want to be friends with everybody. US, China, Korea we’re friends with them. But Pakistanis, crazy Pakistanis want to fight and bomb us.” Average Indians’ hatred and fear of Pakistanis seemed just as serious as that of the average Americans’ towards Muslim extremists, and there seemed to be a lot of education left to do. While waiting in line at the airport, I had a chance to talk to an American & Canada-educated Indian in his late twenties and it was interesting to hear from him that even his well-educated parents share this hatred of Pakistan. And then he also told me that arranged marriages were still common in India, and his parents tried to set him up with some girls during his visit in India. Although my flight took off later than the scheduled time, I arrived on time in Kolkata and it was weird to be thinking I’d be seeing Jeff Arias in this far-away land. But as I picked up my stuff and went outside, Jeff wasn’t there. The domestic airport wasn’t that big and I went in circles trying to find Jeff, but I couldn’t spot him anywhere. Luckily, there was an internet café nearby and when I checked my facebook, Jeff had written on my wall asking where I was and wrote down the name of his hostel, and I took a cab down to the Paragon Hotel. When I arrived at the hostel at around 10, Jeff was already asleep but as I went in and took the bed next to his in a dorm-like room with seven beds, he woke up and shouted “Jy, is that you?” We went out for a cup of chai and it turned out he had gone to the wrong airport (international one instead of the domestic one) on the wrong day (the day before I arrived). But it was good in the end and I found him so everything was cool. Although it was late, many of the street food shops were open so I had some toast and stir fry noodles. It was nice to see Jeff and hear stories from him. Among his many adventures, he had been to Dharmasala where he attended some of the classes that Dalai Lama himself gave, and had great time in Nepal trekking for over twenty days.
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