Sunday, April 24, 2011

Trains and Planes in India

I know I should have been blogging this whole time while I have been in India. It’s just as soon as I got here everyone else seems to have a blog too and I realized how lame I am to think my blog would be anything special. I just continued to e-mail my friends and family instead of blogging but you know what I don’t care I am going to blog! It is kind of like keeping a very public diary but whatever it may help someone make a decision to go to India. If you are thinking about going to India just go. It was a great choice. I left January 14th 2011. It is now April 24th 2011 and I am not going home until my visa runs out June 1st. I was scheduled to be home March 6th but I canceled my plane ticket home and e-mailed my husband to come travel with me. I really love India. The smells, food, colors, and all the people, they have such huge hearts.  


They must have heart there are 1.2 billion people here and they are all on top of each other. Nothing is private in India everyone knows everything about everyone and everyone shares absolutely everything. I love it. It is like have a new family in every new place we visit. I have been here for three months. My first glimpse of India was when I was in the airport in New Jersey. I was getting in line to leave for a 14 hour flight to Mumbai. When they started to board the plane it got chaotic. No one made a straight line and just started to push through to get to the front. It was almost like everyone was panicking to get on the plane because if they didn’t in a hurry the plane would for sure leave without them. Do they not understand we all have assigned seats and its not going anywhere until everyone is on? This really was the first taste of India and I wasn’t even there yet. This is how India operates everywhere. 


I was buying a train ticket on March 20th in Chandigarh to go meet my husband in Delhi. I had already missed the first train so now I had to push my way to the front of the line to the ticket counter. Everyone was sticking their arms into the little hole at the ticket man handing him their form. I jabbed some guy with my hip and pushed until I got my arm in there too. I got the very last ticket on the that train. People will push you out of the way if you patiently wait in line. You will not survive or make it anywhere if you wait in India. When getting on and off trains it is the same way you have to push your way through. At home it is just an unspoken etiquette that when the doors open to a transportation such as an elevator everyone knows to let the people off first before getting on. That does not work in India. You have to fight the current of people to get on the train as others are getting off. It can get irritating especially when you have a huge backpacking pack you are also trying to push on and it is 100 degrees outside.

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