2/21/2017 1 Comment India! Kivunim trip #2As soon as we stepped out of the plane, it was clear we were in a place that was unlike anywhere I had ever been. We stepped down from the plane onto the tarmac to take a bus to where we would go through customs, baggage claim, etc. Already in the airport, the haze/smog/air pollution filled my lungs and nose, something I hadn't even thought about when picturing India. Outside the airport, the haze fogged up the city of Delhi, and our whole group was met by countless beggars as we made our way to the bus, most of which did not have shoes and were little kids. All probably homeless. Countless others tried to help with bags or sell us some little tchotchkes. Culture shock right off the bat. India, a country of over 1.3 billion people, has about 350 million Indians living below India's poverty line, which is defined as earning around $2 a day. Just to compare how many people this is living without homes and in horrible poverty, there are around 320 million people living in the United States currently, according to a 2014 census. This was just the beginning of a crazy 15 day adventure that would make me seriously question many of our Western ideals. Over the two-plus weeks, I experienced 6 Indian cities (Varanasi, Delhi, Dharmsala, Agra, Jaipur, and Mumbai) that were all so different from anything I've ever seen before, and were even so different from each other. Each had poverty and homelessness that is shocking and gut-wrenching, and is something that will stay with me forever. Each had a religious presence, albeit in radically different ways. Each had animals, including cows, monkeys, dogs, pigs, and donkeys, that walked the streets, freely ravishing through the garbage to find any food they could. Each had cars going all over the place, accompanied by taxis, rickshaws, motorcycles going in every direction. Despite all this, every place had its own distinctive features. Also, the food was like really spicy at times, and my mouth was constantly on fire, and I even ate some street food! In Varanasi, the sacred River Ganges, commonly referred to as mother Ganga by the locals, everything is done under a holy, religious light. In our first night in India and Varanasi, we took a boat onto the River to see how the people of Varanasi celebrate their dead and honor their gods. Hindus in Varanasi do not honor the dead the way do, by burying them in a coffin. Rather, they bring them to mother Ganga and cremate them so they can throw the dead's ashes into the Ganges. They also have many other ceremonies occurring on the bank of the River, such as dances and other rituals with fire, but the one that will stay with me the most is the 9 burning bodies I saw just yards apart. I just couldn't fathom honoring the dead like this. This was absolutely one of the first of many culture shocks in India. While the burning seemed so foreign to us, when guides of years past were asked about this ritual, they asked how we honored our dead ancestors. After hearing how we bury them in wooden boxes, the guide's reply was, "You mean you suffocate your dead??" Clearly, we come from such different places, and neither of us is right or wrong. We got up with the sun in our first morning in India to take a boat on the River Ganges to see what it was like during the daylight. In the same water that the ashes were thrown into and animals freely go in and out of, the people of Varanasi were washing their clothes and themselves in a ritual-esque way, dipping their heads methodically. While we were warned that the water was very polluted and would be bad for our skin, the Indians were using the very same water to clean themselves (look at pictures at the bottom). Varanasi is India's 75th largest city at 3 million people, which would make it the United States' third largest city after Los Angeles, although it seemed like a rural, small town at times despite the constant bustling of people and cars. Cows regularly walked across the street, though they didn't stop traffic, they just closed a lane or made an obstacle for Varanasi drivers. The first way I really took in how crazy the traffic/driving scene is was when we were on rickshaws to get to the River Ganges. It felt we were kind of like royalty looking down on the city, which was weird in a bad way, but it was a very effective way to take in everything. We routinely bumped into one of the many other cars or rickshaws or bikes around us, while seeing so many shops that sold almost the exact same things. However, some shops read "finest men's clothing," while many others read "best mean's wear," etc, all trying to convince potential buyers that their store was the best one out there. Traffic circles put Boston traffic to shame, as it was really every vehicle, animal, and person for itself despite a traffic guard's "best" efforts of controlling traffic. Vehicles routinely drove on the wrong side of the street, but somehow there were never any accidents, possibly because they are only ever driving around 15 mph because there are a ton of things on the road. The most lasting experience with Varanasi's roads was when my friend and I went on a run where we had to dodge cars and cows every 5 steps while breathing in extremely polluted air. We ended the run very, very out of breath, feeling sick and our nostrils were black from inhaling so much smog. Running through the dirt roads, through free-for-all traffic circles, in between cars, next to cows and their poop, I felt just a little scared of getting hit. It was one of the most memorable runs of the trip. From Varanasi we went to Delhi for a day, which was a blur. Delhi is a city of 25 million people, but as the capital of India is slightly more modern, but not fully industrialized. It too has cows and more, but we were only there for a day and missed some of the sights we were supposed to see. We went to a huge mosque that gets over 25,000-30,000 Muslims every Friday to learn about the Muslim community of India. From our tour guides and other people we spoke to, it was clear that there was still anger and hatred between the Hindus and Muslims, as one of our tour guides , a Hindu nationalist, said that he hated parts of Gandhi due to his sticking up for the Muslims in the country. This sentiment was shared among many other Indians we met. I had thought Gandhi was to Indians as someone like George Washington was to Americans, a unanimously loved national hero. In Delhi, there were also bazaars or markets for literally every thing you could imagine, from spices to sweets to optical outlets, which had every kind of sunglasses and glasses you could imagine. We then made our way up to Dharmsala, my personal favorite of the trip, which is at the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India and a refuge for many Tibetans who fled from China. Dharmsala felt like a completely new country, there was no air pollution, less poverty, and a different, yet still strong religious presence in Tibetan Buddhism. There we learned about the Tibetan struggle with China, met Buddhist monks who showed us their ways, and even met a former political prisoner of China for 32 years, Palden Gyatso. We also ran and hiked up and down the Himalayan foothills, seeing incredible sunrises and sunsets that could last an hour. Monkeys roamed very freely around Dharmsala, and had very little fear of humans, so we were able to get up close and personal to the monkeys as they ran around the mountains. Our tour guide in Dharmsala was a Tibetan refugee named Dammy who is a Buddhist monk and professor in the Buddhist university. He is one of the most interesting, coolest guides we've had and was very up to date in pop culture and with American movies/media. The Tibetans had moved to Dharmsala decades ago and had set up their community here, with Buddhist temples and flags of good vibes all over the place, because the Dalai Lama, their holy leader, moved here after he fled from Tibet. We saw his home from our hotel and just missed meeting him, as he was in Delhi until the day we left, when he went into a 14-day meditation. Dammy and his fellow Tibetans trekked through the Himalayas to make it all the way to Dharmsala by foot, while Palden Gyatso survived inhumane torture for over 3 decades, shedding light on the strength of the human mind and their incredible resilience. Gyatso endured torture that included electroshock shattering his teeth, eating the leather of his shoes because he was starving, and spitting in fellow prisoners mouths to keep them hydrated due to a lack of water. His survival and now ability to live his life in peace was truly inspiring. After going to the Tibetan Buddhist university and playing an awesome basketball game against some of the guys that go to the school, (just the first way sports united us to the locals on this trip!), and learning about their studies, and meeting an American who is now a Buddhist monk, we made our to the Taj Mahal in Agra. Incredibly, the Taj Mahal was made by a King for his wife after she passed away as a tomb for her. It took 22,000 people to make one of the 7 wonders of the world, a lot of marble and a huge plot of land. It was surreal to be at such a famous structure, and again showed another side of India. India is one of the world leaders in UNESCO heritage sites due to its incredibly long and storied past. After Agra and the Taj Mahal, we made our way to Jaipur, which looked like a city out of Game of Thrones, with fortresses on a hill and palaces and the pink city. We were only in Jaipur for a day as well, but the day was well spent seeing the majestic remains of the kingdoms of India's past. Elephants carried many tourists up the hill to the fortress, though our program opted to take Jeeps up an actual road. On the way up we saw boars scavenge with dogs to find food in the trash, and once in the city camels roamed around giving rides to tourists upon request. Jaipur, with its miraculous and pristine castles and remnants of kingdoms, showed how the current wealth gap that is present in today's India dates back thousands of years and is going to continue in the future. After the third city in the 3 days, we flew to our last and most modern destination, Mumbai, to experience yet another cultural aspect of India and finally met Indian Jews. Mumbai was much cleaner, yet still polluted with far fewer cows, than most of the cities we had gone to, but the poverty and homelessness here was just as prevalent, as was the children begging for just a few rupees to have something to eat that day. We spent our last weekend with the Jews of Mumbai, and our guide Ralphi and his whole family must have known almost every Jew living in and around the biggest city of India. On Saturday, after we went to synagogue, some of us wanted to try to play pick up cricket with the locals, so Ralphi brought us to this giant field that was at least 3 football fields in length, if not more, and there must have been thousands of Indians playing numerous games of pick up cricket, some competitive games with uniforms, and others friendly games with strangers with a wager attached. Because almost everyone spoke English, we were able to get a game going with these guys who taught us how to play and split us up into teams so they could split up among us. They were so friendly and just wanted us to play and learn the game so we could really experience their culture. After playing for about an hour, the guys we were playing with told us they had actually started this foundation called the Magician foundation, which takes kids from the inner-city of India and teaches them how to play Rugby. They said they had just finished their practice just 50 meters away from us, and wanted us to play rugby with them. Despite not really knowing how to play, we happily said yes and got to meet kids our age and play sports with them. It felt like we really immersed ourselves in the culture for those few hours, and the barriers that could have been built between us and the locals was torn down through sports so that we could become friends with our peers halfway across the world. It further showed me how amazing sports are beyond the fun of the game, as they routinely break down barriers and make friends out of people who would otherwise not have known each other, whether it be in India or even in school. This was one of the highlights of the trip, as I really got a feel for the culture of India and what people did for fun during their free time. It was also telling of Indian culture that people were so friendly and comfortable with each other that it was normal for thousands of people to play pick up cricket in a public park every weekend. That is something I'd like to be a part of. In Mumbai, we also saw the Jewish communities that had been here ever since a boat of Jews crashed ashore centuries ago. Since then, the Jewish population has mostly moved to Israel, though a significant population remains, with a few synagogues and a Chabad and a Jewish school. It was actually shocking how cool I thought it was that Jewish Indians across the world said the same blessings on Friday night dinner that I said across the world in America. It is amazing how unifying religion can be, as we immediately felt a connection to everyone in the synagogue despite having never known them and coming from significantly different backgrounds. We also took a boat to a smaller Jewish community that had 7 families total, yet had a cemetery that had within it close to 10,000 Jewish corpses who were buried rather than cremated, despite the overwhelming custom in most of India that we saw on the Ganges. The President of the 7 family Jewish community was moved to tears, which moved many of us to tears, as he looked out at the Jewish cemetery and saw so many of his own family's gravestones and told us where he hopes to be buried, next to his family. I gained a new perspective here, at this cemetery, on what Judaism is all about and just why Kivunim decides to go to a country that barely has any Jewry left. It made me prouder to be Jewish. TLDR (Too long didn't read): Through the various cities of India, a new sense of poverty, of homelessness, of water, of clean air, of cleanliness, of what is important in life, filled the minds of many of us on Kivunim. I was forced to question everything in my life and face more tragedy in person than I ever had before. It is hard to simply forget a three year old without pants or shoes, who looks hungry and tired, who has never known and might never know the most minor luxuries we take for granted like clean water, a toothbrush, shoes, a bed, etc. Small annoyances of daily life are nothing compared to what millions of people in India go through every day, making me more appreciative of life in general. It forces us to take a look at what we have and think about what we can do for our fellow human who simply wants to survive to live another day. Thanks for reading this long post! We go to Morocco, Spain and Portugal in about 2 weeks! To see more pictures, check out my Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/dan.rosenzweigziff) Shoutouts: Holdin, Robbie
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June 2017
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