My trip to India (Hindustan) was something I had always looked forward to doing, so I tacked on a day before and a couple days after my business trip and go to experience some amazing things.
My trip to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, was great. its a 4 hour drive from Delhi so we got to see a lot of life as we drive over 300 miles through remote villages. We went on this trip the day after we (David and I) had arrived from New York. So as you might imagine, we were a bit sleep deprived and just out of whack. We spend 4 hours in agra, and 8 hours driving back and forth, fighting the heat and the urge to sleep. The Taj is truly beautiful… if you ever get to go, don’t pass it up… although I did not get to experience it at night, if you can arrange a visit during the 5 times a months it is open (and synchronize that with a full moon night) and I hear its even more amazing.
My stay in Delhi was mostly work with a few excursions out to the city with my local co-workers. but an 8-8 work schedules do not lend themselves to much fun outside of work.
I had decided to fly a couple hours to Varanasi, the birthplace of Buddhism, on the Ganji’s river. After seeing the life outside of Varanasi, I realized how developed Dehli is. going from Manhattan to Delhi (a city with a population of ~6 million) it was a shock for me, although I new it from everything I had read and watched, but its another thing to be in the middle of it. But Varanasi was a whole nother beast. I had planned a 2 night stay (with the help of our office manager) and ended up cutting my trip short after 24 hours there. Its an amazing place but it has this aura around it that pierces through you, where suddenly you start to feel the peoples pleasures and pains… something that was very uncomfortable for me. I cam back from my 2nd outing in Varanasi and I was watching TV for a few minutes (BBC world here is great) and realized I am paying 100 USD a night (in a city where over 1/2 the people likely live on less than 1 USD a day) watching TV on a flat-screen TV while the people out there are sick and live in poverty. That contrast, was the straw that broke the camels back (the poverty, the inner peace, the humility, the smiles, the curiosity about who I was, and the realization that I will never have as much as these people do as long as I live the way I do) and it made me so uncomfortable that I had to get out of there. I thought about checking into a hostel but I wasn’t materially equipped for it… so I decided to move my flight up a day and get back to Delhi.
for those of you who won’t go past this blog and see the pictures, (https://www.flickr.com/photos/dijitalboy), I’ll give you the run down on this magical city:
  • It is the birthplace of Hinduism
  • It is the home of Shiva, the god of destruction
  • It is the oldest living city in the world (5000 years of humans living continuously in it)
  • It is the epicenter of the Ganji River (the river that is mythologically created by the water from Shiva’s head)
  • It is one of the most polluted rivers in the world (you’ll see why in the next bullet)
  • It is where Hindi’s bring the bodies of the dead for open fire cremation and offered to Shiva via the Ganji River (you are allowed up to the open fires to watch the bodies burn – which I did and it was scaring. As I say in one of the pictures, it scared my soul)
  • It is almost 80% Hindi, 15% Muslim, and 5 percent all other
  • It is about 300 miles from Nepal
  • It has 3 million people living in it (keep in mind that there are 1.3 billion people in India)
If you get the chance, see the pictures, else, take a trip… it will change you..

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