I am back in Okinawa now and still coming to terms with what I experienced in India. Perhaps that is a little melodramatic but it was definitely a memorable trip which gave much food for thought. The first thing I noticed almost immediately after walking out of the aeroplane in India was that the air seemed smoky. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that Delhi is very, very polluted. The inside of our nostrils were permanently black due to all the particles we were inhaling, goodness knows what it was doing to our lungs. I shudder to think! So the first shock was how polluted the air was, the second was how Indian India really was. I had various preconceived images of India (what I thought were stereotypes) in my head which suddenly became reality moments after leaving my hotel, in the streets around our hotel, people slept, cooked, ate and washed, right there in the street! The street its self was basically mud with the odd bit of paving showing through. There were several holy cows just a hundred metres from out hotel and feral dogs wondering around unchecked. Without anytime to take it all in we were accosted by rickshaw drivers, people trying to sell goodness knows what and of course beggars. It was almost too much to handle but as the days passed I became used to the hustle and bustle of the streets and it no longer phased me. I soon got stuck into haggling while shopping or for rickshaw rides while touring the sights of New Delhi. Just to give you an idea of what sort of place Delhi is, Delhi has an international airport, soaring glass office blocks and Indians driving Mercedes surrounded by muddy streets crammed with people and animals living in abject poverty with no refuse collection system and a very rudimentary sewage system. At one point I saw on one side of the road a nice looking university building and some shining glass fronted technological institute while on the other side of the road people were living in makeshift dwellings of dirty cloth and branches surrounded by small hills of rubbish! While in Delhi we saw the Jama Masjid (India’s largest mosque), the Gordwara bangle sahib (a very peaceful Sikh temple), Ghandi’s house and site of his assassination and the India gate. We also took a day trip up to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which was just as beautiful as one would expect, which is very. On the 19th (I think) we took an overnight train (19 hours) to Calcutta and then another local train to Panskura where we would be teaching English for the next 9 days. Panskura was very much a rural backwater, as we left the train and walked to out ‘hotel’ literally everyone there stopped what they were doing and stood silently watching us. For our time in Panskura we were to remain celebrities, constantly being asked to sign books and even clothing. Never for one moment were we not the centre of attention! This did get somewhat tiresome but all was made well by the enthusiasm and general wonderfulness of the children we were teaching. It was really heart-warming to meet such great kids in such a place and also heart breaking thinking they will have to grow up and live in such a place. Apart from the poverty northern India (especially the rural areas) suffers from many social problems. The group of 20 or so orphans that lived at the school permanently in particular won our hearts. This is not to say the teaching was easy, it was as draining as it was chaotic but we pulled through as a group due to many sterling efforts despite misbehaving bowels! I think everyone on the group bar one lucky girl suffered from the dreaded Delhi Belly to varying degrees. By the time the camp had drawn to a close we were more than ready for a rest, hot showers and clean beds! It was not to be so! Instead we went on a boat trip down the Sunder bans (a delta of the Ganges River). We perhaps had the possibility of seeing the infamous Bengal tiger and relaxation on the river but this is India and we had 20 young children with us on a rather small boat. We also missed a day on the river due to some typical Indian planning but let’s not go into that, things never EVER run smoothly and on time in India. One just has to accept these things with as much grace as one can muster. Which I admit at the time was not much grace at all. The boat trip was survived, just, and we retired that night to a rather nice hotel in Calcutta. Although the hot water wasn’t quite all there the bed was large and clean. Western food for breakfast (toast and eggs) was about the best thing I could think of at the time. I didn’t go into the food we ate in Panskura but suffice it to say it was terrible! I tried at the time to be positive about it, positive right up to when it started to cause regular and violent visits to the squat toilet. That was when I refused school food and ate only pre-packaged white carbohydrates. The food was plain (rice and boiled vegetables) and carried the very real risk of diarrhoea. Back to Calcutta, we spend the following day enjoying Calcutta which seemed very civilized compared to Delhi. I am almost afraid to say but I am sure some of this is due to the much greater British presence in Calcutta. Visiting the Victoria memorial in Calcutta was one of the highlights of the trip for me, as was St Johns church and St Andrews Kirk. Actually seeing the writers building where much of the East India Company’s administration was done was also quite amazing. Rather than endure the train again we took a flight back to Delhi, although this was a flight at 6am new years eve (well I suppose really it was January the first, 6 hours into the new year) so it took some enduring as well. As a result we were back in Delhi where due to weariness and low funds we relaxed for the remaining 3 days of our trip. During this time much shopping was done by people and much western fast food was eaten. We also saw some more amazing historical sites; the Jantar Mantar, a huge set of astronomical instruments and Qutb Minar an ancient mosque/palace which boasted a 73 metre high tower (perhaps minaret). To end it all of course there was drama during our exit from India. We had booked taxis to the airport in good time but as we began trickling back from last minute shopping (getting rid of those last rupees) we were informed that we had to leave immediately because of a large traffic jam, not only that but we had to take a detour to avoid it and so had to pay extra. After some pretty insane traffic (I don’t think there is such a thing as the highway code in India) we made it to the airport in time and boy were we glad our adventure was over and we were on our way to lovely clean Japan! My adventure was not quite over as my ferry was cancelled for three days in a row after I arrived so I was trapped on the main Okinawa island a little longer. Not a great hardship though, in fact I am pretty darned please it worked out like that.