Happy Holi!!!

A little bit of a scary picture... but still fun!

The Festival of Colors (Holi) is being celebrated in Utah this weekend.  I’ve always wanted to go to this celebration and honestly, I don’t know why I haven’t yet.  Well when I got here I realized that I would be here in India during that celebration, I was so excited!  Holi was actually celebrated here in India on March 17^th!  This holiday was an absolute BLAST to celebrate here.  In the morning we had our Telugu class and then after that we ran to the house to grab our money to go buy some colors.  Our Indian family that lives in the house with us said they would wait till we got back to start celebrating with us.  So we ran up the road to this little shop that was selling a bunch of things for the holiday.  They had tons and tons of colors to choose from and they also had colorful water guns and things like that, it was so fun!  Here, Holi is celebrated with not only with throwing all the colorful chalk, but it is also a giant colorful water fight!!!  As we were buying our chalk, a group of girls (completely covered with rainbows of chalk powder) came up to each of us saying “Happy Holi!” and then rubbing the colorful chalk in their hands all over our faces!  Some of them rubbed their powder onto our faces, and some of the girls just threw tons of it on us and then ran away! Haha it was so funny!  Well we hurried back to the house where they had been waiting for us but with buckets filled with purple water ready to throw on us!  So it began!  We had an absolute blast throwing our colors all over each other, rubbing it into people’s faces and hair, and having a giant water fight!  There was a group of young boys (our neighbors) who were outside having a colorful water fight too; they decided to start a water fight war with us which was a ton of fun too!  It was just an absolute blast celebrating Holi this way in India.  Everything and everyone was an absolute colorful mess afterwards but it was so much fun.  Sadly I didn’t get any pictures of it since I didn’t want my camera getting ruined, but one of my friend’s here dared to use his phone and took some fun pictures from it.  

Sidu! Durga's son Sidu joined in and was having a blast with a water gun, he is so cute!

Most of the colors on my face got washed off from the water, sad huh?

Our hands were completely dyed afterwards.  My hands are the pink/purple ones at the top.

My skin was died for a while, and even my hair!  Of all the colors that had been rubbed into my hair, the pink stayed.  So I temporarily have some pink coloring in my hair!  And the road outside of our house is still colorful!  Happy Holi everyone!!!

This was the top I was wearing during Holi after it was aggressively washed haha

Yep, I Hate Monkeys. And Rabies. And Vaccines here. And Monkeys.

The day after we got home (February 27) I was taken to the doctor to check out my monkey bite.  The doctor’s office is located in an ancient looking building on a nearby University’s campus.  The doctor’s office had a bunch of people in it all lined up to talk to him.  When we came in my professor started talking to him (in Telugu, so I have no idea what was being said) the doctor said something to a nurse that was in the room who then motioned for me to sit on a bed that was in the room.  The doctor didn’t talk to me at all and he never even looked at my bite.  The nurse pulled a curtain out so that the rest of the people in the room wouldn’t be watching.  She had a small pile of things on the bed (syringes and my vaccine) and she started drawing up something in the first syringe.  I assumed it was the rabies vaccine and asked her where she was going to give it to me, she pointed to my arm and then my hip.  Great.  Not only was I getting two shots, but I had no idea what the first one was, and the second one was going in my hip… basically a shot in my bum!  When she was about to put the first shot in my arm I started panicking because she hadn’t prepped my skin with an alcohol wipe or something like they’re supposed to.  Not seeing any sort of alcohol wipes, I hurried and asked my professor about it, he then nodded and pointed to a small cut out piece of newspaper that had some tiny cotton balls on it and said that’s what those were for.  The nurse grabbed one, rubbed it on my arm, and then gave me the first shot.  My roommate had come with me and thankfully she happened to have some Band-Aids with her so she gave me one for my arm.  Then the nurse started drawing up the rabies vaccine (the nonexistence of sterile technique here completely terrifies me).  Once she did, she started waving the syringe and needle around like it was some wand talking to my professor and motioning for him to wait outside.  Seriously, it freaked me out how much she was waiving around that needle!  Well she gave me that injection and then I was relieved thinking that it was all over and that I would never have to have this experience again.  Wrong.  I didn’t realize that the rabies vaccine was a multiple injection deal, and the doctor said I would have to come back 4 more times!!!  AH!!!!  So now, not only was I stressed about the whole rabies thing, but I get to worry about getting some sort of disease or infection from just the nurse giving me multiple shots.  Because there is no sterile technique, nothing is really clean, and even the nurse doesn’t wash her hands…. I’m going to die.  So now, from this lovely experience, I am really really hating monkeys right now.

I’m Not a Fan of Monkeys Anymore.

The next morning (February 25^th) we went to the train station and started our trip back home.  Our first train ride took us from Agra to Vijayawada, and from Vijayawada we hopped onto our last train that took us to Visakhapatnam for a total 33 hour train ride.  For the beginning of our first train ride we got a whole booth to ourselves which was nice.  To pass some time we started playing some card games.  The train ticket guy came in to check our tickets, and it was funny because after he did, he just sat there with us making some small talk, and after that he continued to just sit there haha.  It got a little awkward so we started playing our card game again, and then he stayed and watched us play.  He said that he liked card games so we tried to kind of explain the game to him, and he watched us play till he understood how it worked and then he left!  Haha it was just so random!  Anyways the next day we arrived in the Vijayawada train station.  I was so thrilled, just one more short train ride to go, we were so close to getting back to our cute green house, and we made it through our whole weekend trip with nothing bad happening!....I spoke too soon.  We had a 3 ½ hour wait in the station till our next train would get there so we decided to walk around, get something to eat, and find out which platform we needed to wait on.  On our walk across platforms I noticed some people who were stopped watching two monkeys!  They were tossing them food to eat, and since we had time to kill we joined the other people to watch the monkeys.  Well once we came over to watch, one of the monkeys came right over to me and sat right next to my foot and was looking up at me.  Then all of a sudden it jumped onto my leg, grabbed my leg, and bit me!  And then just as fast as it happened, it jumped off and ran away!  Well my first reaction was to laugh because of what had happened.  Seriously, of all the people standing there it decided to come after me!  Now I can add a big monkey in India to my list of random things I’ve been bitten by!  After that I started worrying about the possibility of getting some sort of infection or even worse, rabies!  Unfortunately we were in a dirty train station, in a city that we couldn’t even pronounce the name of, so there really wasn’t much we could do about it.  The stupid monkey had managed to make a small cut so I washed it out as best as I could with hand sanitizer.  Then I called our professor and asked him if he would call our doctor and see what I should do when we got back.  We enjoyed our last train ride watching some chick flicks, and then got a ride back to our home here!  It was SO wonderful to be back!    

Oh and this is what my monkey looked like:

And This is Why I Miss My Car.

The next day (after our day at the Amber Fort) we woke up and decided breakfast in bed sounded delightful.  We thought getting room service would be a good way to enjoy our breakfast while avoiding people staring at us!  Ha ha ha take that annoying stare people!  After our breakfast we took a rigshaw ride back to the jewelry store we had been taken to the day before, to get some jewelry as a souvenir.  The rigshaw driver that took us to the store waited for us outside.  We wanted him to take us right back to our hotel so that we could pack and be ready to go when our driver to Agra came to pick us up, but the guy wanted to take us and drive us to a bunch of tourist places and other random places so we would have to pay him more.  We kept telling him NO! and to just take us back to our hotel!  So he started driving but not back to the hotel.  He made a stop in front of a cool looking museum for us to take pictures of and then he drove us to see the Hawa Mahal which was awesome to get to see and take some pictures of too.  

Cool museum!

Hawa Mahal! It's like a giant Indian gingerbread house!

But after he did that we started getting nervous and kept telling him to take us back to our hotel.  He finally half-way agreed and started driving, but while he was driving he started showing us pictures of his wife and saying that she was really good at drawing henna, and then he started telling us he wanted to take us back to his house to meet his family and have his wife draw henna on us.  Doesn’t that sound like a great and totally safe idea?!  Of course we started panicking and freaking out because he wasn’t taking us to our hotel and wanted to take us to his house instead, so (in our angry voices) we told him to take us back to our hotel because we had a meeting we had to go to and couldn’t be late.  He finally gave up and took us back, what a relief!  Once he pulled up to the hotel, we hurried and paid him and then ran into the hotel and up to our safe room.  Not long after that our driver came to take us back to our hotel in Agra, I was so happy to see that man!  It was nice being able to have a driver come and take us straight from Jaipur to Agra because the drive was only 4 hours (instead of the bus which took 6 hours).  But even on this drive back our driver took us to some random place, parked the car, and wanted us to take a shopping and tea break.  We went into this little store place where a bunch of other poor tourists were dropped off, convinced that they needed to buy more stuff here.  We walked around for a little while but wanted to get going again so we waited by the car till our driver decided to reappear.  He drove for another 45 minutes and then decided he needed more tea haha so we stopped again for another tea break.  Well we finally made it back to our hotel which was lovely!  We wanted to find a nice restaurant to go to for dinner since it was our last night there; and we also thought going to a place that served north Indian food would be a fun food experience to have.  We decided to go to a place called Pinch of Spice.  So we went out and found another rigshaw driver who said he knew where that restaurant was.  The little fibber!  Anyways after much driving around, he finally found it!  It was a nice restaurant that had north Indian, Chinese, and some Italian food!  Being in north India, I should have ordered some north Indian food…. But…. I got my Italian pasta instead!  (I know! Shameful!)  Not gonna lie, it was super delicious!  The other girls did the same too!  So here we are at a north Indian restaurant eating our Italian pasta!  It was fun, and the food was super good!  After that we made our way back to our safe hotel.

Stop staring, it’s rude.

I suppose staring isn’t rude here, or maybe people just don’t care, but people were always staring at us!  So once our tour guide dropped us off at our hotel we decided to have lunch in the hotel’s café, hoping to relax somewhere that would allow us to take a break from people staring at us.  I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it really is annoying having people constantly staring at or watching us.  The food at the café was delicious!  But even there, in the hotel, people were staring at us.  It was mostly just the waiters and staff working in the café, but then other hotel employees would come over and stare at us! Haha I now know what it feels like to be a goldfish!  We went back up to our room to figure out our transportation for the next day.  We needed to leave in the morning to get back to Agra, but taking a bus was completely out of the question!  There was no way we were going to take a bus again after our last trip!  So we found a driver who could come pick us up and take us back to our hotel in Agra, perfect!  Then we decided to go out and walk around because the street our hotel was on had some places we just had to go to!  

Check out who I saw in Jaipur!

Yummmm!!!

McDonald’s.  Yep, the first McDonald’s we’ve seen here in India!  Of course we had to go!  So we went out to the McDonald’s and each got a McFlurry.  We also went to a Nike store that they had, and then we went straight back to our hotel room!  Haha with all the people staring at us, it got uncomfortable and so I was happy to just hang out in our room where I could feel safe, and the other girls agreed.  So we just spent the rest of our day relaxing and watching movies!  It was fun!

Now all I need is a flying carpet ride!

The next day, after our Taj Mahal adventure, was spent in Jaipur.  This day was very wonderful to me because I got to ride an elephant! Check that off my bucket list!  Our tour guide for the day came to pick us up from our hotel in the morning, and first took us to the Amber Fort.  The Amber Fort was quite an amazing place to see.  When we first got there we got in a line of people by the entrance to walk up onto a platform where we could hop onto an elephant!  

Amber Fort

Sonia! 

McKenna and I got to ride an elephant named Sonia.  We got to ride the elephant all the way up the hill and into the first main entrance of the Amber Fort.  I was totally spazing out with happiness for getting to ride an elephant, it was just so cool!  Within 24 hours I got to ride a camel and an elephant now I just need to ride a flying carpet and I could be like Aladdin!  Anyways, the elephant pulled up to a platform for us to jump off onto and from there we instantly started taking tons of pictures (mostly of the elephants).  Our tour guide would take us through each main square within the fort and tell us a little bit about it, but all we really wanted to do was take pictures and explore.  Our tour guide was honestly really annoying, he would have been great if he kept his mouth shut haha.  5% of what he would tell us about actually was related to the Amber Fort, the rest of what came out of his mouth was money money money, and how much he loves money and worships money, and blah blah blah!  We had lots of fun though going off on our own to explore inside the fort.  This place is seriously SO COOL! It’s really just like a giant labyrinth!  There are so many passageways all over inside the walls; we had to be careful not to get completely lost.  

Main Entrance

The halls just kept going and going!

My dream is to one day play a giant hide and seek game here, it would be so fun!  One of the places we went to in the fort, there were some people gathered taking pictures.  We went to see what was going on, and we saw these two little monkeys that people were feeding and taking pictures of.  They were so cute!  So we joined in, taking pictures and throwing them food.  I got a fun video of one grabbing food out of my hand, it was so cute!  So that made me super happy, and it was just a lot of fun running around and exploring with the time we had in the fort.  On our way out we stopped to watch a snake charmer!  That was pretty dang cool to watch.

Snake Charmer!

From there our super awesome (not) tour guide took us to a jewelry store, because we are American girls (which according to our tour guide means we have loads of money to spend constantly throughout the day) so he, being so thoughtful, took us to a jewelry store for us to spend our money.  Well unfortunately it really was a nice store that had tons of gorgeous jewelry.  So we looked around at all the pretty jewelry for a while, apparently Jaipur is known for its gems?  So we all ended up finding some jewelry that we wanted (that darn tour guide!).  After that we went and saw the Jal Mahal, it’s this pretty palace that sits in the middle of a lake in Jaipur.  

The Jal Mahal

It was cool to see!  He then wanted to drive us all around the city, but we were so tired and hungry… and sick of him, so we had him take us back to the hotel.

Taj Mahal, camel riding, and a bunch of other adventures along the way day!

Saturday morning (February 22^nd) we got to enjoy the hotel’s “American breakfast” attempt which really wasn’t too bad.  We had the same driver come and pick us up and drive us around for the day.  First stop, the Taj Mahal of course!!!  Seeing it was so amazing, it’s so absolutely beautiful it took my breath away.  

My ticket in!

At the entrance. Yep, I was freaking out!

Walking through the entrance finally getting to see it!

I know my pictures aren't that great, but it really was SO beautiful!

I was beyond thrilled to see it!  Sadly pictures don’t do it justice.  When we entered there were lots of photographers trying to get us to pay for them to take pictures of us, we got one to agree to a reasonable price and decided it would be fun to have him take a few pictures for us.  We ended up having a big photo shoot in front of the Taj Mahal, it was a lot of fun!  

It got kind of annoying though because almost every two minutes people would stop us and ask for pictures with us (what odd people! I don’t get why they would want pictures with random people when they are at the Taj Mahal!).  Anyways, we finally made our way to the entrance of the Taj Mahal, we got to go in and see the tombs which were so amazing and beautiful.  We got to walk around and admire all the detail of it; I wish I could properly describe what it was like because it really was just so amazing!  

In front of the Taj Mahal, a picture of one of the entrances right across from it.

Just admiring the detail!

After we finished we were in a bit of a time crunch so we hurried to the south exit where our photographer said to meet him to buy our pictures.  We were led down a small crowded street packed with souvenir shops and obnoxious guys yelling at us to buy stuff (because yelling at people makes them want to buy stuff).  Once the guy gave us our pictures we made our way back to the main road where we had first entered the Taj Mahal.  We were in a bit of a rush to go meet our driver so that we could go and at least grab some lunch before we would need him to take us to our bus station, so we started speed walking up the long road stopping for no one.  This road that we were on was actually pretty cool because there were these carriage-like things being pulled by camels up and down the road.  I wasn’t interested in riding in the carriage; I just wanted to ride the camel!  Seriously I didn’t realize how freakin awesome tall camels are, so yes, I really wanted to ride one!  Some of the camel carriage drivers were determined in trying to sell us a ride; one in particular was super persistent and he followed us up the road for quite some time.  We told him we didn’t even want a ride in the carriage but that we would rather ride the camel.  Then he said that we could ride the camel….. um, SOLD!!!  There was no way I could pass on this opportunity!  Camel riding, in front of the Taj Mahal, in INDIA yep yep yep!!!  It was so cool, I climbed up onto the camel and then got to ride it up the road.  I felt like I was on top of the world!  Seriously it was the funnest thing I did, it totally made my day!  

Ah! Camel!

The other two girls got to take a turn as well, and then afterwards we found our driver and had him take us to Pizza Hut!!!  Well… we now know where all the other tourists were hiding!  Haha Pizza Hut was totally packed with people; I met this nice group of people who were from Texas, it was just fun being there and meeting some people.  The pizza was great of course, after that we told our driver to take us to the bus station.  We had google searched where the station supposedly was and it looked kind of far, so we figured we would need the rest of the time to drive there, but our driver said that apparently it was super close and we had time to go to another place first.  He wanted to take us to some marble shop, we were super anxious though to get to our bus on time (we had a hotel reservation for the night in Jaipur, so we needed to make sure we caught the bus to Jaipur since it was a 6 hour bus ride away).  We kept telling him to take us to the bus station but he insisted that we had plenty of time (grrr I’ll just very nicely say some people here are quite frustrating!).  So he (with no permission from us) drove us to this marble shop for more people to aggressively try and sell us things haha.  The store was pretty cool because it had table tops and things that were made out of marble and the same gems used in the Taj Mahal.  They used patterns and designs that the Taj has and it was all quite pretty.  It was cool to look at some of the things they had but overall the experience was quite uncomfortable, so we were happy to finally get out of there.  From there we got our driver to take us to our bus stop.  I won’t go into all of the details of what our bus ride was like, but I will say it was a completely terrifying, unsafe feeling, and frustrating experience that I will never repeat.  The bus ended up getting us to Jaipur around 11:00 p.m., it dropped us off in this sketchy place so we took the first rigshaw we could find and from there we got a ride to our hotel.  I was just so thrilled to be in a nice hotel where I could feel safe again!  We each got to enjoy a real shower again, and this hotel had a mini fridge with good stuff in it haha (most importantly my Coke in it (which was needed)), and it had a nice comfy bed so we felt all better by the end of the day!  It was so great!