India

Apologies for the length of time since my last post. Mostly that's because it took 11 days to cross the Indian Ocean, our longest stretch without stepping off the ship for the entire voyage. We did stop for refueling in Mauritius, on a beautiful day when the place looked very inviting, but it wasn't quite the same as a port stop. So everyone was extremely ready to get off and explore India when we got to Chennai on October 14.

We knew we would be in for something different from all of our ports so far even before we began pulling into the harbor. When we stepped out onto the balcony to watch the city get closer, the smell of industry in the air was incredible. It reminded me a little of the smells of the Kawasaki industrial zone from the highway, probably because the pollution was coming from similar petrochemical and other heavy industry. Even if we had no sense of smell, we would have known we were entering a dirty-air zone because the ship's crew had covered all of the outdoor furniture and the pool bar with plastic and put cardboard over the carpets near the entrance to prevent us from staining them with tracked-in soot.

When our family left the ship to explore the port later that morning, we found the air at the street level similarly thick with the exhaust of two-stroke auto-rickshaw engines. One of the most striking things about India, I think, is the chaos and cacophony of the streets: not only auto-rickshaws (which are most numerous in the center cities) but also bikes, bike-rickshaws, motorbikes, cars, trucks, buses. The lanes are only suggestions, so that our tour buses often straddled the lane lines and drove full bore ahead into oncoming traffic in order to pass slower vehicles.

What was amazing, however, is that the chaos somehow worked. The auto-rickshaws twist and turn and get through and around the traffic. And the drivers were incredibly CALM. They honk, of course, but none of those who drove us around cursed at another driver or showed any sign of emotion or upset. The driver who drove us back to the ship the first day calmly zipped in and around all manner of obstacles as he told us how he had been driving Semester at Sea visitors around Chennai for many years. Just that morning, a former homestay visitor to his home from eight years ago had visited his family, and he was going to be getting together with this old friend and his brother (a student on our voyage) the next day. The older brother had stayed in touch all of these years and sent money, at times, to help his son afford private school. He was proud that his son would soon be going to college. I don't know what proportion of our students are making connections like this during our brief times in port, but it was great to learn that some are.

On day two in India, we flew from Chennai to Delhi for our first big trip (all four family members, multiple nights away from the ship) of the voyage. The flight was great, and we had a nice tour of the Gandhi memorial, seen here. After having learned a lot about his philosophy and impact on modern Indian history in our two Global Studies classes, it was great to see the large groups of Indian school children and many others honoring this great man.

Then we were off for the final leg of travel that day, a train ride to Agra where we would spend the night before devoting the next day to seeing the Taj Mahal and other sites nearby. The train ride itself will probably end up as one of the most memorable part of the trip, especially for Isabelle who had been worried since we planned this trip to India about how dirty it might be. There is an excellent express train that runs once a day between Dehli and Agra, and we took this on the way back, but on the way to the city we were on a "deluxe AC intercity express" that wasn't very deluxe or AC or express. It took almost six hours to cover a distance the other train covers in two, getting us to Agra, where dinner was waiting for us, near midnight. The AC in our compartment was broken and windows sealed, leaving us to sweat (see photo). And there were cockroaches crawling on the walls and seat backs. Most of the students on the trip were good-humored about it. As we say, you've got to be flexible when you travel the world.

The flexibility was well-rewarded the next morning, though, when we got up early to see the Taj at sunrise. The Taj Mahal, which means "my chosen one," was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to honor his favorite (seventh) wife after she died in childbirth. I had been there myself 35 years earlier with my parents, when I was just nine, and it was amazing how much I recalled from that earlier visit as Gabrielle, the girls and I explored the place together. Its symmetry and color and the quality of the workmanship with all of the inlaid marble have a way of imprinting the many views of the place on your memory. Still, it was great to have so much time at sunrise and again that evening at sunset to walk around viewing it from many angles and distances, while also watching all of the people.

Our day in Agra was in many ways a journey back to the heyday of the Mughal Empire, with the Taj as a hook to get us wondering about how this group of Muslin interlopers from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan were able to sweep in and take over virtually all of the Indian subcontinent. After a couple hours at the Taj and breakfast back at the hotel, we went out later that morning to the "lost fort" in Fatehpur Sikri, about an hour away. This fort, seen in this photo, had been built by Akbar, the Mughal ruler who was responsible for most of the expansion in its heyday. He built it in just four years and then occupied it for just 14 while he used it as a base to establish his dominance over provinces nearby before moving the capital back to Agra. Few of us on the trip knew about this fort before our visit, but most us found its story and the irony of something so long-lasting and beautiful having been used for just 14 years, quite intriguing.

After practicing his construction and architecture technique on Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar then went on to build the Red Fort in Agra as his new base of power. It was in the courtyard of this fort that Shah Jahan met his "chosen one" when she was selling jewelry at a bazaar for the nobility. Shah Jahan also added to Akbar's structure grand palaces for himself and his family members. Many of them have beautiful views, like this one, of the Taj Mahal by the river. Shah Jahan was ultimately imprisoned in this fort after his own son turned on him in his grab for power, so this was his view of his creation and the memory of his favorite wife in his final days.

At the end of this long day, after another stop at the Taj and some shopping, we took (a much nicer) train back to Dehli. Isabelle's favorite part about our trip to India was our stay in the very nice Hotel Intercontinental that night, and the breakfast bar the next morning. But our stay there was brief as we hit the road again that morning to see, among other things, the Red Fort of Dehli, which Shah Jahan planned and began building at the end of his reign.

After returning to the ship from Agra, Melina and I took off again the next day for sightseeing nearer to Chennai that took us back to a period long before the Mughal Empire when the seventh century kingdoms of the South gave birth to some of the grandest Hindu temples built up to that point. Here is just one image of the Shore Temple carved out of granite just off the shore line in Mamallapuram.

For our family and many others, our time in India was probably the most exhausting (but interesting) for the ports we've been to so far. Gabrielle and Isabelle decided to rest on the ship the last day rather than joining the seven-hour bus ride to see Hindu temples. All of us wished for a day off after we sailed, but of course classes were scheduled to begin immediately the next morning. The ports are coming more frequently now, with just three days between Chennai and Penang, and three days then to Vietnam.