Day 2

Namaste India!

Fact: It is 113 degrees outside. Fact: I am very happy this room has AC. Fact: My friends and family are 11,000 miles away, literally on the other side of the world. Fact: I will be here for seven more weeks. Fact: No one here believes in toilet paper. Fact: I just ate the most amazing ice cream in the world and it cost a whole 45 rupees… roughly the equivalent of 1 US dollar.

Allie is sick today, but Ariana and I had ourselves a little mini adventure. With no idea in mind of where to go, we started walking to find what kinds of shops are around the area. There isn't much. The cleanest streets here would look like shady allies in America. Careful where you step. Large pits are cut into the sidewalk and are filled with garbage. Cow and dog poop are regular landmarks. I even almost stepped on a fallen power line. That would have been fun!

I can't get over how brown everything is here. There are some magnificent looking buildings, but due to who knows what they have been run into the ground and are now slums. Dust is everywhere. And so are people, many of them homeless. I want to take pictures of some of the places these people live, but it doesn't seem right to take a snap shot of misfortune like its a tourist site. Most don't know any different though. To them dust and dog poop and fallen power lines are just life.

On a happier note, I rode my first rickshaw today. Took it to a shopping center where we got some ice cream in a flavor I could barely pronounce and something called Dahli. Don't really know what it was but it was delicious. We walked around a bit, peeked inside the "shopping center" but it was pretty much a long dark hallway with a bunch of tiny rooms and men sitting outside of them waiting for shoppers to come through. Except there were no shoppers. It spells rape. I however, thought I would be ballsy so I walked in and was ushered down the stairs by an Indian man with a leather shop. I needed some kind of purse so I figured there was no harm checking it out. When I got down the stairs though I immediately regretted it. The shop wasn't lit. It was pitch black, and as the shopkeeper scrambled to light candles, I realize how quickly I can find myself in a stupid situation in India. Ariana and I wouldn't go inside the shop so they had us sit outside in the hallway while they brought me purse after purse, all of them quite obviously fake leather and cheaply made. Downstairs in the dark with five Indian men hovering over you adds a bit of pressure. I quickly picked out the least ugly one and began the bargaining process…. which I have found out I am very bad at. His initial price was 900 rupees, about 20 USD and FAR too much. After refusing to pay even 600 and standing up to leave, I eventually got him down to 450. It was still way too much for the purse, but again, being in a dark basement hallway with strange indian men adds a bit of pressure to just buy the damn purse and get the hell out of there.

Fact: No more shady shopping centers for me.