Goodbye and our last day in Delhi!

The Baha'i Lotus Temple

The Baha'i Lotus temple was the last thing we wanted to see here in Delhi, and we accomplished that! It was pretty cool and interesting to read about this small religion in their information center. The Baha'i faith is one that believes that all the world's major religions are a part of a single, progressive process through which God reveals His will to humanity. The central theme of this religion's message is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for humanity's unification into one global society...
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Farewell Blog....we are going home...

I can't say I am looking forward to the long journey home but it's the only way to get to where we need to go...so that's that!

India has been quite an adventure. Our trip has been full of good and bad, but overall I will miss the times spent in this unique and diverse country. Whenever I travel, part of me wishes I could keep going and going. We are so close to many places on this side of the world that intrigue me. I am always left with the realisation of how fortunate I really am to have seen what I have seen! For this trip I thank my dad and Susan and the support of others! Thank you also to my employers for holding my jobs! OK, so...There is still so much of India that we need to see, so we will return someday! Until than sweet India...NAMASTE!!!
-Cara

farewell India

So this is it, we leave tonight from New Delhi, to Korea, to Seattle, and finally to the land of potatoes an' republicans. We leave at one in the morning here, and reach our final destination at something like three in the afternoon twenty-seven hours later on the same day. I'm not really sure how that works, but it sounds like we are traveling back in time! Cool. India has definitely left a lasting impression on me. I think that I have never learned such a great amount of useful knowledge in such a short amount of time. I have also never met so many interesting people or seen so many interesting things. It is the education that I will miss the most though I think, that and getting to sleep in however late I want. I will not miss honking horns, the sound of loogies being hawked, or shit on the street, however. I kind of like this blogging thing though, maybe when I get back I will start a new blog if I can think of something interesting enough to write about. See you all soon! -ashby

Agra


The Taj Mahal


Ashby and I



Another Taj view-thats me in the corner


...and another


Agra Fort


Agra Fort







Ashby and I have played "Happy Hours OHNO" so many times on this India trip!!!
(the game is just "UNO", but they re-named it "Happy hours OHNO"

We saw the Taj Mahal this morning at around 6:30 am...It was quite magnificent really. Better than I imagined!
Rudyard Kiping described the form as "the embodiment of all things pure", and poetically I agree with him!
When we were finally let into the gates (after standing in line and paying a slightly outrageous sum of about $15) the structure seemed almost unreal to us.
As the sun came up, the light slowly changed the appearance of the Taj . Time went by and more people begun to flock to this popular tourist place. We left glad we came as early as we did.
It is referred to as, "the most extravagant monument built for love". The story is that the Taj was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial for his wife that died during childbirth...He really must have loved her to create such a wondrous masterpiece...
The Emperor and his wife are buried beneath the Taj, but nobody is allowed to see the tombs. There are fake tombs inside the Taj that are surrounded by an intricate screen of marble and inlaid semi-precious stones!
Beautiful...

More pictures

sunrise on the Ganga

dias and a huge crowd for the festival

swastik







yes, that is what it looks like

'nuff said

Deep Diwali and floating the River Ganges


Children creating a butterfly shape with dia candles

Dias

Deep Diwali (the ghats lined with more than 5001 earthen (Dia) candles

A flower shape made from real flower petals and more dias

Ashby-this morning, on our boat ride

People bathing as we passed by

This morning at 6am, we took a boat ride on the river, . The experience was really very haunting for me...It started with the rotting corpse of what looked like a cow and then led to maybe a hand full of other corpses including a small child, an adult human and a few more cows. The child was not as bad considering the body was still fully wrapped in cloth, but the adults body will remain in my mind for a long time. The reason this haunting image will not leave my mind anytime soon is because its face and feet were exposed and crows were pecking at it's flesh! I have realised that its the faces of these deceased people and animals I've seen in the water and at the ghats, that have disturbed me the most! So far I have seen dead cows, dogs, monkeys, rats, birds, and people (laying in the street, on the railroad tracks, bobbing in the water, and burning in the ghats) and it is all a bit overwhelming really...

Varanasi and Sarnath

Well, as our time comes to and end, here in India, I am left a little sentimental. We've had such a great time and we will take with us many great memories!
I am very happy to spend some of our last days here in Varanasi. Varanasi has proven to be one of the most interesting places we've visited, and one of the most emotional...
Watching the bodies burn at the burning ghats was quite intense for me. It brought up many thoughts about my own mortality and brought to the surface many suppressed feelings about loved ones who have passed away in the last few years. Death is an interesting notion and how every culture and religion comes to terms with it is even more interesting!
The other day Ashby and I took a side trip to a tiny town called Sarnath. Sarnath is where the Buddha came to preach his message of the middle way to nirvana, after he reached enlightenment at Bodhgaya. Now Ashby and I can say that we have been to two out of the four important sites on the Buddhist circuit! Bodhgaya was better in my opinion, but I am happy to have stood at the site where Buddha's first sermon was preached!
Tonight I leave you with the Buddha's last words, "All things must pass. Work on your own salvation with diligence."
-Cara

Our hotel in Varanasi

A holy man-Sadhu



Ganga Aarti ceremony held at the Dasaswamedh Ghat

Sarnath-Dhanekh Stupa (this marks the spot where Buddha preached his first sermon)

The modern temple in Sarnath

Buddhist Ruins

Buddhist Ruins

A Bodhi tree in Sarnath-transplanted from the derect descendant of the original Bodhi tree

The Ganges

The other day we went to the burning gahts again, and made sure nobody followed us so that we weren't hassled for money. I really learned a lot. When someone dies, they have to perform the funeral within twenty-four hours. They wrap the body in white cloth to symbolize purity, then in some brightly colored cloth. The people who handle the bodies are a seperate caste called dom. These are also the people that try to get money from you, claiming that it is to help the poor families with the price of wood. The family carries it through the streets on a bamboo stretcher to the burning gahts. First they bring it down to the water to bathe it. The body's face is unwrapped and the water is poured into the mouth three times to further purify it. Then it is carried just up the bank a little to a prepared wood pile. There are special places to burn the body depending on the caste. Closer to the Ganges is Brahmin and further up the bank is each caste successively. The First son, with newly shaved head has the duty of setting the fire. First he must bring the flame down from a temple just up the bank, then he brings it down and walks around the body five times before lighting it. There are also several things thrown on top of the pile such as sandlewood powder and incense. Women are not allowed to go to the ceremony because they could cry, and if tears are shed, then the body will not be pure. There are also three types of people that they do not burn: People that die of some disease such as leporacy, small pox, or snake bite, children under the age of twelve, and pregnant women. This is because these people are already pure. They are tied to a rock and dropped into the river. Which brings me to my next subject.

I have had a few things that I promised myself I would do in India. Among them were to see a cobra (check), see the Dalai Lama (check), Try some betel nut (delicious), and bathe in the Ganges. This last one poses a slight problem. Aside from the above-mentioned corpses sitting at the bottom, I have also learned some other disturbing facts. The Seven km. stretch of the river that contain the Gahts also contains thirty large sewer outlets. The water is so polluted that it is septic, meaning it has no dissolved oxygen. This is straight from the lonely planet guide book: Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water. In water that is safe for bathing this figure should be less than 500! I guess we should have gone upstream. Too late now. to think the other day, an elderly man yelled at Cara in Hindi because she was washing some mud off of her shoes in the sacred river. Think tomorrow I will don a newly purchased loin cloth and maybe take a quick dip up to the neck followed by a long anti-bacterial shower. Wish me luck!-ashby

Here are some typical Gaht scenes:

Sarees drying on the gahts

some boys playing cricket

Some kind of religious thing maybe

This one was taken right before the old man yelled at Cara (that's her washing her shoes)