I'm in India! And I must say I love it here. :) It's interesting, so many people time and time again warned me about security and keeping my wits about me that they seemingly forgot to mention something fairly obvious... when the plane finally landed (the flight only took 7ish hrs, i don't know where i got 12 from) and I walked from inside the plane to the jetway - at that very moment I go smacked in the face. The humidity here is crazy. At the airport it said 71% humidity, and oh my, I was soaked in seconds.
It was interesting, I was warned that when leaving the airport I would be bombarded by people trying to grab my bags and lure me to their taxis or auto rickshaws. But they didn't. Mostly they just stared as i walked by, occasionally I would have to get close to one holding up a sign because my eyes were tired, and when I did that they would perk up a bit, but then as i would move on they would go back into waiting mode. Any way eventually I found my driver and he lead me to where another girl was already waiting. I stayed with her as our driver went to wait for another one.
Now this is the part where I experience the infamous Indian Driving. The lane-marking lines were either never noticed or were deemed as optional long ago. People, bicycles, auto rickshaws, motorbikes, cars, trucks, and buses weaved around and nearly through eachother, constantly honking to let the others know that they were coming full speed ahead. I even surprised myself at how calm i was through the whole process of getting to the train station. i guess I just figured that our driver was not new at the whole concept. this was his job after all.
The train station was fun. we were dropped off by our non-English speaking driver, but we managed to understand that we would be met by the Delhi coordinator shortly. So we waited by the gate. We saw a few monkeys sitting on a fence. I really wanted to take a picture but was outvoted by the other girls who thought it was to risky to pull out the camera while we had all of our luggage to deal with. So no picture, sorry. I'm sure there will be more monkeys to take pictures of at a later time. After a few minutes our coordinator arrived, along with a few sprinkles of rain, to lead us and the other group to the right train. As we walked along the sprinkles turned into rain and rain turned into down pour and that turned into, what i'll dub, monsoon status. i think it maybe lasted for an hour but it was a very welcome relief, if only temporary, from the heat. When the train opened up people began to pack in, but there was this nice old man who said, "Ladies first," and let an old lady and myself get on before he did. Our compartment held about 145 seats and as many people, if not more, packed into an air conditioningless, open windowed, multi-fanned, giant metal box. On the way on I got a quick view of the bathroom. it was everything I imagined. People had described it very well, apparently, because it was a little (tiny) compartment with footing steps on either side of a hole in the ground from which I could see onto the tracks. I didn't go investigate further, but i would have to take a guess that the hole was about the size of a tea saucer. Any way, we made our way to our seats (which of course were on the other side of the compartment) laden with bulky, heavy bags which we threw onto the luggage racks above our seats. Once the train picked up and was full speed ahead, the heat wasn't too bad, but unfortunately it was not a straight shot train and we stopped at plenty of stations along the way on our 6 hour journey - ours was the last stop the train would make that night. We passed many villages and some cities, in varying condition and then it became mostly countryside and small farm patches. It was one of those moments that will stay with me forever - sitting in a godforsaken oven of a train car, hanging out the window and watching different groups of boys of varying ages, from young boys to older men playing games of cricket on open patches of dirt in their fields, backlit by the waning sun.
Unfortunately, the sun did set while we were on the train. Luckily, most of the compartment emptied out by that point because that way i was saved from too many people seeing my less than composed or brave reaction to what followed. They turned on the lights. Remember, there are two key factors: it's pitch black outside and the windows were all open. Bugs of all shapes and sizes, flying, fluttering, and crawling made their way into the compartments. Of you are imagining chaos please keep that image because it would be hard for me to explain the full amount of squeemishness I had to quite visually overcome. The natives seemed unfazed, just brushing the insects aside if they landed on them,while is foreign folk were constantly popping up in a popcornesque fashion every few seconds. It amuses me now, but for such small and, i guess, completely harmless creatures they sure du have the power to displace 7 American 20'somethings from their seats.
Long story short, I made it to Dehra Dun around 9:30PM, got driven to the homestay, met "Aunty" our homestay mother, who is the sweetest woman. She gave us yummy soup, I took a bucket bath, and wend to bed.
The beds are interesting, it seems the most common one is a king sized bed that is basically a raised sheet of wood covered by a fairly thin layer of padding. the bed has a slight bump in the middle to separate the two halves. It seems like i'll be sleeping on my back for a month...
