Oh, The Places I'll Go!: "There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won't go. For me, India is such a place."

*Warning- this is a very long blog post- a very long post for a very crazy trip.
But I hope it will be worth the read! :)

"Perhaps the only thing more difficult than to be indifferent to India

would be to describe or understand India."

I wanted to start this blog post with that particular quote because this, in fact, seems to be my biggest struggle with India- how to describe both the country and my experience there to others, or even how to understand it myself. I have already had countless conversations with people since I've been back about how India was. They usually go something like this:

"Oh my gosh how was India??? Was it amazing???" To which I respond with a long pause and then, "Um.........I don't know."

I'm sure this isn't exactly the riveting tale of action and adventure people expected to hear upon my return from India. It's certainly not what I expected to be telling people, that's for sure. But sitting here, two weeks after my return from my trip, I still don't know what to say about it. This seems to be a story best told face-to-face, but since that is virtually impossible with many of you reading this right now, I will do my best in this blog post!

I guess the best way to describe this country I wandered through for 16 days is to say that India is India. It is a country full of contradictions. I saw not only the most beautiful and spectacular sights, but also the worst and most horrible things I have ever witnessed there. In my mind, that makes it difficult to attribute one particular adjective to my trip. Was it great? No. But was it horrible? No, not at all! How can I use just one word to describe what it was that I saw there? Still trying to figure that one out. I do feel like I've given everyone in our program the wrong idea that we had a terrible time though, because whenever I get asked about it, I sort of just clam up and go "Uhh.....yeah...it was......yeah."

One thing I have noticed since I've returned is how many people seem to have a romanticized view of India- I can't blame anyone, I had it too before I left! In fact, as I write this, I am listening to a playlist of Indian music I found online and it's called "Let's drink some chai." Is there anything wrong with that? No, not really I guess....But it's important to know that just because women walk around in beautiful saris, that doesn't necessarily mean everything must be beautiful and Indian culture is oozing out of every surface in India. Not the case. Although it is undeniable that between the colors, the people and the vibrant nature of life, India is a country full of incredible culture- but much of that gets covered up by the bad stuff. Namely, the poverty.
The poverty in India is unlike anything I have seen in my entire life. It is truly indescribable. Unfortunately, I don't really have any pictures of Delhi or Kolkata that can truly show the extent of the poverty that is there- while we were in the middle of it, it just never felt right to stop and snap pictures of people in the slums, so now I have no photo proof. The best way to give you an idea of what it's like is to imagine a National Geography documentary. The naked children climbing on mountains of trash? It's there. I've seen forms of suffering in my life, but I'm not sure anything will ever come close to comparing to the suffering I saw in India- particularly in Kolkata.

My week in Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta to the Western world) was definitely the most difficult and most wonderful part of my trip. Lauren, Jason and I spent a week volunteering with Mother Teresa's order of nuns, the Missionaries of Charity. We woke up every morning at 4:45 am to make the 30-45 minute walk to the Mother House for Mass at 6 am with the sisters. The Mother House was built by Mother Teresa. It is where she lived for fifty years, where she died, and where her body is buried. I was able to visit and pray by Mother Teresa's tomb every day, which was just an indescribable experience. I felt such a sense of peace next to her tomb, and it became a source of comfort for me in the midst of the insanity that is the city outside. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, we spent the mornings volunteering at Prem Dan, a long term care center for women who are very sick or disabled in some way. In the afternoons, we worked at Kalighat, which was a home for the dying. Both Prem Dan and Kalighat are located in the middle of the slums surrounding the Park Circus train station, which made for an interesting walk every day. More often than not, we were swarmed by the children of the slums saying hello to us, but also trying to grab anything they could off of us- namely our water bottles or any pocket change we may have had. On our day off on Thursday, we went with the sisters to a center outside of Kolkata for people being treated for leprosy. Each one of these centers were just incredible, and getting the chance to serve there was amazing- very, very difficult, yet very amazing.

Despite how challenging our service was, I believe one of the most challenging parts about this whole experience was coming back to my "old life" in Bangkok. It has been very hard for me to go back to living a "normal" life here. Now that I have seen all of this beauty mixed with suffering, I'm not sure what to do with it. Sometimes, it catches me by surprise. I'll be sitting in class or back in my room, and suddenly get completely overwhelmed with memories and feeling about what I saw. It's a very strange feeling because as hard as it was to be there, I can't help but feeling like I miss it in a way.

An older man we met while volunteering told us, "You have to look at India as parts, and as a whole. The parts aren't so great when you are up close, but when you look at it as a whole, it is magical. There's something about it that draws you in." I think I understand this now. You hate and you love India at the same time. No matter how many problems it has, there still is something about it that brings you back in. That must have happened to me, because I just cannot seem to get India out of my head.

If I get into any more detail about what we actually did or experienced in India, this blog post will absolutely never end. So I'll start to wrap this up. For any of you interested in a more eloquent description of what India is like, please read the following article. It is one of the most accurate descriptions I have found since my return. The one thing I did not agree with in this article is the statement that the author never felt unsafe....I think it's fair to say I felt unsafe a good amount of the time I was there. But still, this article provides a brutally honest look into what India is truly like- both good and bad, and I think it's important for people to read and understand!

http://postmasculine.com/a-dust-over-india

I'm sure I will go back to India someday (much to the dismay of my parents, I'm sure). But like I said, there is something about it that continues to intrigue me. I can't help but want to go back to this country that completely took me off guard, pushed me to my limits, and truly changed my life!

Here are some pictures of different parts of my trip: