Ms. Aspinall's trip to India

Hello from India!

Jon and I have now spent two weeks touring around a state called Rajasthan in India. It’s been amazing! To tell you about what we’ve seen, experienced and thought about I’ve divided this blog into sections with as many pictures as I can cram in.

The people

India is a very large country, with a huge population. Just the capital city, New Dehli, has 24 million people living in it (this is the same number of people who live in the whole of Australia). The biggest thing that strikes you when you travel through India is that a lot of people are very poor.




This is the view of Bundi - can you see the houses are painted blue (again to scare off insects)?

 

Most people have a house but lots of them are very small. Some don’t have electricity or even a bathroom. However, there is lots of building work going on everywhere – better houses are being built. Also the government has promised to pay for a toilet to be put in every house. So we got a sense that things are improving for a lot of people.



This is a traditional house made out of clay and cow poo (to scare off insects).

Education is also obviously very important here. The schools are the nicest buildings around and there are lots of adverts for schools. People have told us that the children are incredibly well behaved because they all want to learn. Their parents know how important it is to learn as well so if the children are naughty at school – they are in big trouble at home!

Most of the people we’ve met in India have been wonderful. When we’ve got lost or wanted to ask questions, people have been so helpful. The children in particular are all so smiley and happy, waving to us or showing us things. This has been so lovely to find in a strange, very hot country where we don’t speak the language!

Some welcoming locals.

 

Our activities

We’ve done so many different things in our two weeks it would be a very long blog if I wrote them all here, so I’ll just pick out my favourites.
The Taj Mahal is a very famous landmark around the world. We visited it when in a town called Agra, near New Dehli. It’s a towering building made out of white marble with a beautiful dome at the top. It was built by an emperor long ago.
The story goes that his wife became very ill while giving birth to their 14^th child and was going to die. On her deathbed, she made the emperor promise three things. Firstly, that he would look after her parents. Secondly, that he would love all their children equally. Finally, that he would do something after she died that would make the whole world remember their love forever. So he built the Taj Mahal and put her body in a tomb inside. And indeed, this story of a man’s love for his dying wife is known around the world because of the beautiful monument he built.

When we visited the Taj Mahal it was late afternoon so we watched monkeys playing on the lawn in front of the majestic building as the sun went down – it was quite magical.

The Taj Mahal

 

Another of our favourite experiences was going to watch a Bollywood movie. Bollywood is an Indian style of film which usually tell a romantic love story between a man and a woman. We saw "Badrinath Ki Dulhania" (Badrinath finds a wife). It was in the local language of Hindi but it was amazing how we were able to follow the story anyway. Thrown into the film are lots of extra songs and dance scenes which creates a wonderful, jolly experience for those watching it. We’ll definitely be watching more Bollywood movies when we get back (though maybe with English subtitles next time).

The movie theatre was very glamorous.

 

My favourite experience however has got to be a stroll through a small village in the countryside. As we walked, children came rushing out of their houses to say hello and wave at us. They were even friendlier than the children at Holly Spring! Some of them tried out some of the English they’ve been learning at school such as “What’s your name?” but they all knew one phrase – “One photo?” They wanted us to take pictures of them on our cameras because a camera is something very exciting for them.

 

These children don’t have much – no televisions, phones or ipads, no electronic toys or big houses, but they were incredibly happy. We were lucky to have met such wonderful people as they passed their joy on to us. From them I bought some simple home-made bangles which I’ve worn every day since to remind me of them – I can’t think of any jewellery I’d rather wear.

This man makes bangles out of the sap from trees. He heats it up and rolls it into a bangle.

 

There have been many other exciting things we’ve done, for example staying in a Marharaja’s House (he’s a local king), riding camels through the desert and of course the day Jon was sick out of a bus window – I’ll just have to save those stories for when we get back!

Food
We’d been warned that most of the food in India would be spicy. Someone told me they even put chillies in Coke! I was a bit worried about this because I’m not very good with spicy food but it turns out I didn’t need to worry. Some food has a little ‘kick’ to it – but actually I’ve had spicier food in England!

Most people have curry for every meal (even breakfast!). We tried to eat like the Indians do but after about a week we gave in and had toast and jam for breakfast instead. We didn’t mind curry for lunch and dinner though because it was delicious.

Our new favourite foods are biryani (rice with vegetables in it), pakora (fried balls full of all sorts, veg or meat) and kachori (slightly spicy pastry-type things, quite like mini Cornish pasties). On one afternoon, a lady took us to her house to show us how to cook some of these yummy things so hopefully we’ll be able to make them when we get back.

This is our home-cooked meal of Paneer curry with rice, dahl and chapatti.

 Transport

We’ve been lucky enough to try almost every type of transport in the last two weeks. We have been on:

-         Planes (where we watched Moana and loved it!)

-         Metro trains

-         Taxis

-         Buses

-         Tuk tuks (funny little car/bike type things, see photo below)

-         Boats

-         Trains

-         Mini-buses

-         Jeeps

-         Canters (huge jeeps which seat 20 people and drive around safari)

-         Camels (which was great fun as these are much bigger than you’d imagine so you’re very far from the ground)

The view from our canter to another, while we were watching for tigers in Ranthambhore National Park.

 

Jon enjoying a tuk-tuk ride.

A quiet Indian street, with car, motorbike and tuk-tuk.

Don't I look relaxed riding a camel!

The camels having a break by rolling in the sand.

 

The only one we’ve not tried in elephant riding. There are elephants around and it’s been fun seeing them walking along the roads with the other traffic. However, the people who own the elephants don’t treat them very nicely so we didn’t pay to go on one.

The roads in India are crazy! Firstly because there are so many types of vehicle on them. As well as the cars, buses, tuk tuks and motorbikes, there are also random cows standing around and blocking traffic everywhere. Cows are seen as sacred so they are allowed to wander around but they can get grumpy so you have to keep an eye on them in case they want to give you a nudge.

Cows like to sit in the middle of the road blocking the traffic.

 

The second reason is that there aren’t the same traffic rules as in England. Instead of following one after another, vehicles are constantly beeping and pushing in front of each other; even driving on the wrong side of the road where they think they can. Alongside the roads, there are no pavements so people mix in with the traffic, trying to avoid the cow poo!

 

Finally instead of pedestrian crossings, people just have to cross even when there are things coming towards you – and just hope they stop! They always do though because drivers are very used to this. It may all look like crazy chaos but we’ve not seen anyone get hurt – it must be more organised than it looks!

Religion

Most of the people we’ve met in India are Hindus, but in India there are also lots of Muslims, Sikhs and also Christians. In Hinduism there are millions of gods so you can always find one that really suits you to worship. Hindu temples send out ‘calls to prayer’ twice a day, at sunrise and sunset. These are beautiful songs that play out around the local area to tell the people to come to the temple and pray.

A colourful Hindu temple in New Dehli.

 

Hindu weddings are really interesting. They go on for days but on the most important day, thousands of people are invited to attend. Jon and I thought we have having quite a big wedding with only 130 people! On the wedding day, the guests arrive in the evening and have a party together whilst waiting for the bride and groom. But, by tradition, the bride and groom take a long time to get ready so when they arrive, it’s very late at night. The ceremony itself is actually about 3am, so almost all of the guests, apart from close family have gone home to bed and don’t see them actually get married at all!

We went to a Sikh temple (called a Gurudwara) in the capital city, New Dehli, and saw its huge kitchen. Every Gurudwara has a kitchen so it can provide a meal to everyone who visits. It doesn’t matter who you are - what religion, age or how rich or poor you are – you can all have a healthy, free meal here.

Ladies making chapatti in the Gurudwara.

The kitchen uses huge pots to feed so many people.

The kitchens are run by volunteers, people who aren’t paid but come and help out in their free time. Also, we were told true stories of Sikh people gather together in their thousands to go to a different city and clean it. They pick up litter, wash roads, paint walls etc. So you can see that sikh people are very generous people.

Conclusion

All in all we have had an incredible time in India and we’re sorry to leave it! Next we’re moving to the country of Cambodia so I’ll send another blog post from there in a few weeks.

I hope everyone at Holly Spring has a wonderful start to the term – particularly 4Amazing! Missing you all and looking forward to sharing all our stories in person when I get back.

Lots of love,

Ms Aspinall xx