INDIA

OVERLAND TOUR - Posted APRIL 7, 2008

We arrived in Madras (Chennai), India on Easter Sunday morning, March 23rd. We attended the 7:00 AM Easter service onboard the Queen Victoria before departing on our six-day, five-night overland tour of India. As something special for Easter, we actually had a minister lead the service (as opposed to the usual Anglican service led by the ship’s captain, the British Sunday-at-sea tradition). Although there has always been a Catholic priest on board to conduct daily mass for the Catholics, this is the first time the Protestants have had an ordained minister officiating at a service. Cunard brought on board the Rev. Jim Shaw, a retired Army chaplain and Lutheran minister from Georgetown, Texas, along with his wife, Jo, for about ten days surrounding Easter. They were delightful but, unfortunately, we were unable to interact with them as much as we would have liked since we were away in India for a week. We did discover, though, that their daughter and son-in-law graduated from Wheaton College, Marilyn’s alma mater.

The Queen Victoria was elaborately decorated for secular Easter with giant chocolate creations of eggs and bunnies, where we posed for a picture in the ship’s “Easter garden” before disembarking the ship. Through prior internet travel arrangements we had booked an overland tour of India, with seven other people on board, to see the Taj Mahal. But we saw a lot more than that—after a day tour of Madras, we flew to New Delhi for two nights, rode by chartered bus to Agra for a night, by bus again to the “pink city” of Jaipur for two nights, winding up with another flight to Bombay where we re-connected with the Queen Victoria on Friday, March 28.

We discovered firsthand that India is a land of huge contrasts—beautiful buildings and impressive ancient sites, but also full of poverty and unhealthy conditions which permeate everyday life. And, of course, there are lots and lots of people (1.2 billion). We think we saw them all, as people were swarming in the streets everywhere we went—along with the world’s largest population of cows. Then throw in some camels, elephants, goats and what you have is chaotic traffic and hazards everywhere. How about this statistic: India is only one-third the size of Europe, but has one-sixth of the entire world’s population! Needless to say, we look back very gratefully for the fabulous Indian adventure, but are happy to have returned to the “Mother Ship” healthy, safe and intact!

Now for the details of our trip. On Easter morning, we met our general guide, Deepak, who remained with us for the entire tour. In each city we also had local guides who imparted expert knowledge about local sites. Our first stop in Madras was the Hindu temple of Kapalishvara. To go into the temple courtyard, we had to take off our shoes and walk barefoot through really gross, filthy, muddy water (we actually got some plastic bags to tie around our feet but they were anything but waterproof)! We saw the various temple domes, elaborately adorned with a myriad of brightly painted Hindu gods, but were not allowed to enter the sanctuaries where priests were dispensing blessings to the people. Being Easter Sunday morning, we thought it especially appropriate that our next stop was the large, beautiful, white Basilica of St. Thomas where we witnessed part of their Easter service. This cathedral is famous as a Christian shrine built over the tomb of Saint Thomas, Christ’s “doubting” disciple. Thomas came to India in 52 AD and began a community of Christian believers. This is one of only three churches in the world which lay claim to being built over the remains of one of Christ’s twelve apostles, the other two being St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, and St. James de Compostela in Spain. It was quite a sobering Easter experience to pray at the tomb of St. Thomas who actually saw the resurrected Jesus. Later we visited a museum of antiquities containing many ancient bronze statues and figurines of Hindu gods and heads of Buddha. By the way, more religions are practiced on a larger scale in India than in any other nation: Hindus (80%), Muslim (13%), Christians (2%). The remaining 5% is made up of Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians (Parsees) and Jains. Plus exactly 40 Jews in Delhi according to our guide. 2% Christian doesn’t sound like much, but 2% of 1.2 billion is 24 million Christians in India! After our first of many wonderful lunches of spicy Indian food, we boarded our plane for a 2 ½ hour flight to New Delhi (like flying from Phoenix to Chicago.)

We had the whole next day to tour both Old and New Delhi, including some very impressive 16th century palaces, city arches, towers, mosques and temples. Many of the buildings (such as the tomb of Humaya ) were on a greater scale than some European counterparts built in the same time period. Our group survived a somewhat harrowing but exhilarating ride on manually-pedaled rickshaws through the very bustling, narrow alleys of the Old Delhi markets. The small lanes with all the colorful goods for sale reminded us a bit of the Via Dolorosa in Old Jerusalem, only with MANY more people dashing and driving around our rickshaw, with thousands of telephone and electrical wires drooping down overhead like a web between the buildings . As a city, Delhi was our favorite with its charming old heritage juxtaposed with its modern, cosmopolitan center of government and commerce.

On Tuesday, we were off on a 5-hour bus ride from Delhi to Agra. The images from this ride through the rural countryside and small towns of India will forever be seared into our minds! We tried to capture as much as possible through video and photography, but many things we will just have to try to remember without the luxury of pictures as a reminder:

Snakes – Just pull up to a red light and look for a congested group of men some of whom have a covered woven basket and two-barrel bamboo flute. For a few rupees, they’ll open the basket and play their flute to entice the cobra to rise up, puff up, and look you in the eye (that is assuming you don’t scamper back on the bus first).

Bricks – Hundreds of 150-foot tall chimney towers spewing smoke above the red brick kilns where the bricks are fired. Baked bricks are everywhere—stacked in the fields, and stacked high on many (old) trucks on the road—not sure how the tires stay inflated and the trucks are even able to move.

Dried animal dung – Millions of patties burnable for fuel are made by collecting cow dung in the fields and forming them into discs about the size of a Frisbee. To do this, they put the dung into round woven baskets and then pop them out like big chocolate chip cookies (!) then leave them in the sun to dry (open-air oven) before stacking them in amazingly artsy configurations—swirls, spirals, mounds, huts!

Hay – We saw many women out in the fields cutting hay and straw by hand, gleaning (a few with babies on their backs) and gathering it into piles, or creating teepee look-alikes by stacking the straw vertically with a stylish swirl. The straw could then be loaded into wagons, often a primitive cart frame with canvas fabric to hold in the hay, pulled by a camel or tractor. Some wagons were so overloaded you couldn’t even see the wagon underneath.

Wheels, wheels, wheels! – The name of the game in India, like any third-world country, is to find wheels (ANY kind of wheels) to get you where you want to go. Some of the amazing sights we saw:
A whole family of six riding on one motorcycle, including the mother dressed in her beautiful flowing sari holding an infant;

12-15 people loaded onto a three-wheeled, partially open “tuk-tuk” - people hanging on the sides, back, plus riding squat-legged on top;

People clinging to tractors towing wagons heavily loaded with: bricks, hay, or who-knows-what-kind of bagged produce-- and of course PEOPLE riding high in the air on top of all that cargo;

Women being transported in carts pulled by tractors (or camels). They were packed in shoulder to shoulder in the wagons and as always wearing their elegant sari’s;

Bicycles loaded with everything from extra people to any number of large steel milk cans to boxes stacked at least 15 feet high on the back;

Commercial buses packed with three times as many people as they were built for—even saw some 10-year-oldish boys clinging to the outside of a bus (on the escape ladder attached to the back door) balancing a huge bag of potatoes.

Cows and water buffalo ambling through the traffic – they are calm, cool, and look well-fed—plus they have the right of way.

If you don’t have wheels, then you have to walk. We saw many women walking alongside the road carrying a wide spectrum of things on their heads or shoulders: huge tree trunks or branches at least 20 feet long (leaves and all), bundled firewood and kindling, big containers of water, huge tarps full of hay, baskets of potatoes, fruits, and other produce, and our own personal favorite—a huge basket of cow dung patties perfectly stacked in a cone shape and balanced on a woman’s head.

We finally reached Agra after a five-hour, eye-popping, white-knuckled bus ride. We think we know the rules of the road now in India: (1) the cows, camels, elephants and goats have the right of way, and (2) the drivers do whatever they have to do to avoid the other drivers, such as driving on the wrong side of a divided highway, making three or four lanes out of two (definition of lane=some white lines the British left behind but not sure what they are there for)! We finally got to see the object of this whole Indian expedition: the fabulously awesome Taj Mahal. We tried to appreciate the beauty and symmetry of it as best we could, but we also realize its magnificence can never be adequately captured in pictures or video. We mainly just have to remember the wonderful experience of being there and seeing such a perfectly symmetrical architectural monument of such exquisite beauty.

The next day we had another exciting six-hour bus ride to the “pink city” of Jaipur. We learned that it is called the pink city, not because it is built of pink marble, but because the city folk decided to paint the exterior of their buildings a pinkish/coral color in 1911 to spruce up their city for the Prince of Wales’ visit. We visited a fascinating outdoor royal observatory (one of four in India) with a giant sundial which showed the time within two seconds of accuracy hundreds of years ago. It also had various structures which showed the movement s of the earth, constellations and planets according to the seasons. Perched high above the city, we visited the Rajah’s huge 17th century Palace in style—riding into the castle atop colorfully decorated and draped elephants. Our two nights in Jaipur were spent in a very elegant hotel (a former palace) which was in complete contrast to the street conditions outside its gates. Jaipur was a pleasant city overall, but there are many buildings that really need repainting after all these many years since 1911!

Early Friday morning, we flew to Mumbai (Bombay) to re-board the Queen Victoria. We had arranged for a day tour of the city but most of our group was exhausted, and many were in either the initial, middle or late stages of suffering from “Delhi Belly.” (Fortunately, we did not get it, a fact we attribute to eating only cooked (spicy) food, and religiously taking our GSE (Grapefruit Seed Extract) tablets before every meal—a preventative we previously heard about from other travelers and something that definitely seems to work for us.) Regardless, our group did manage to hang in there for an abbreviated tour which included observing the world’s largest outdoor laundry (2,000 workers cleaning clothing and linens by beating them against the sides of the open-air stone water vats). We also visited Mani Bhavan, the home of Mahatma Gandhi, now a museum, library, and memorial. We are enjoying reading his autobiography and book of sayings which we purchased there. We were surprised to see so much majestic and impressive architecture in the city of Bombay, much of which conjures up images of London. It is one of the largest cities in the world with around 15 million people. We managed to do some frenetic last-minute shopping for Indian goods before boarding the ship and sailing for Dubai. Captain Rynd’s greeting, although we had heard it at every port, never sounded so good: “Welcome back home!”