Travel Virus

Sadly I’m already back home. It was my best trip ever! India is so incredible, I strongly suggest everyone to visit it once in your life. I have seen wonderful places and experienced an amazing different culture, but over all I met great people there.

Few days ago I visited Varanasi, the sacred city for Hindus, where they bath in the Gange. It is just unbeliavable. Some pictures here:

I also visited the KarmaSutra temples in Khajuraho. Those are Hindu temples 1000 years old. This seems quite strange, as now hindus are very conservative, such as with full body coverage and not showing any affact in public, it is even considere bad to hold the hand of the husband in public!

In Allahabad I visited Nehru’s house ( first president of indipendent India). He seems to be a very cool person; I bought a book of the letters he wrote to his dauther (Indira Ghandi), it’s really good as it gives an insight on his view of the sense of the world.

Here’s a photo of a shop in Chitrakoot:

Finally, on my last day I was invited to an hindu wedding. It was just great! There were indian dances, wonderful decorations, flowers and beautiful colors, and the spouses were dressed in such incredible cloths, with tons of juelery and flowers… fantastic!

Yea! I went to see the Taj Mahal! That’s supposed to be one of the 7 wonders of the world (and it certainly is), and it’s on the BBC’s list of “50 place to see before you die”. It is really worth the trip. The wholw city of Agra is very nice, I visited also the red forth (all Mugol buildings, that is muslim).

Then we stayed two days in a very small town called Chanderi, where we had dinner by a local family, it was a very cool experience. I’ve seen many monuments to the widows: here when the husban die, they used to burn his wife together with him!!!!! Jesus

Now I’m in Orcha, a beautiful city on a river, with amazing buildings, and we are staing in tents just at the feet of those ancient buildings. At the moment a Hindu festival is going on here, there are so many people on the streets, singing, giving speeches, praying, shopping, just a total mess! Have a look how this bus is crowded!!

I will have no internet for the next week.

I finally joined the Intrepid group in Delhi, we are 12 people, mainly from Australia. My room-mates are called Lydia ( from New Jersey) and Alex ( from Australia). Delhi is a huge city, very crowded and very messy. Today we visited the Friday Mosque, where we had to walk without shoes on a not-very-clean pavement (covered of animal escrements!). Never mind, this is India! Then we visited the central market and the spice market, totally crazy!! This experience does not remeber me anything I have seen before or anything I did before… just feel like I’m acting in a movie!

This building is called Lotus Temple and it is not specificfor a religion, but it is open to any relgious celebration. I discovered there are many other building like this around the world.

Here’s the surprise for the USI friends!
Jamila got married on January 6th, in Kottayam church (Kerala, India).

And I was there!

It was great to see Kerala and an indian marriage, and even more great to be there for my friend’s marriage on the other side of the world, who could have guessed it really happened!Her husban is called Augustine, he is Indian and lives in Stuttgart, Germany.
Kerala is beautiful, I suggest everybody to visit it. It is much more “western” then what I have seen before. To be honest, it is another India. So after seeing the very poor, I have seen the very rich. Seems like nobody is really poor in Kerala (I have seen only Cochin and Kottayam): houses are nice, nice car, many girls dress with jeans and t-shirts, there is more cleaness and order. More than everything I like the atmosphere of the back-water area, a place that i suggest to visit and that I hope I will be able to visit for longer time, maybe taking a houseboat to cruise

Cochin is a very nice city on the sea, many tourists, nice food, relaxed people. Some friends of Jamila were taking care of me, they have been so greately kind to me and took me around for sightseeings and provided accomodation. It was really great. Too bad I had to leave. I am now in Delhi, to join the tour and visit noth-east India, and it’s freeeeeezing: tonight only 4 degrees!

I’m now in Chennai (Madras); yesterday i left Smiling children’s home, very sadly. The goodbye was very emotional, I had so good time there and felt very welcome. I spent three weeks with nearly 150 kids and the people who work there, i also managed to learn some Telugu (local language) and have some cooking class

I had so great time there, getting to know all those people, their personal stories, their thoughs, dreams and feelings. They have been so nice to me, some kids even gave me happy new year cards, and i was wondering with which money they managed to buy it, since they are all extremely poor; probably it was a big expense for them.

We spent Christmas night singing, dancing and watching movies (indian movies), and the Christmas day I went to church in Vijayawada dom, it was an interesting experience to see how those people mix catholic with typical indian traditions in the mass.

For example you have to go in the church without shoes, men stay in one side of the church, women on the other side; outside the churces they have a place where to brake coconuts and drop the coconut water on the stone, as a tribute.

One day we took all the kids to swimming pool, it was funny to see their swim suit here: the women are fully covered with long pants and big t-shirt! Men use boxers and many also a t-shirt. It is not surprising after 3 weeks here I have seen that India is a very conservative country, and full body coverage is always respected.

For new year’s Eve we had a big cake and fireworks. Although we stayed in a remote area, fireworks were all over. It was a nice celebration with all the kids dancing and older boys and girls making decoration (rangole) on the pavement, with flowers, or salt, or colors, as it is typical in India.

Finally for some flight-conection reason I could not visit Banaglore as planned, but I am now in Chennai. Yesterday I went for a tour of the city with a friend’s friend’s friend’s, as it is usual here; he took me to see some churches where St. Thomas was murdered and buried. Then we had dinner with his family and his lovely kids that were calling me ‘aunty’. I’m always impressed of how people who don’t know me are so extremely nice to me.

In those weeks I had time to give myself an indea of indian life: indian middle class have a 3 room apartment, they sleep on small camping materess, no hot water or fans, but they have amazing cellphones with high resolution cameras, send their kids to english schools (much more expensive than local language schools) and have big TVs. Strange.

In rural areas I’ve seen many houses made of just one room, with the roof made of leaves and no current water. Some have electiricity. Still a big difference between classes.

However I have never heard people complaining. That was interesting for me. Most of people are quite poor but they are not unhappy, they are proud of their mobiles, their shoes, their buffalos… This makes me remeber that being happy is just a condition of the mind, it does not depend on how many thing you have.