December 29

So an early start is a lot easier when you just kinda pass out super early with your roommate after you’ve been traveling for almost an entire day. Time zones are completely weird and can be absolutely chaotic on a person’s body but I didn’t understand the benefits of actually trying to screw up your sleep schedule a little bit before any trip. Yay naps!

It’s currently a little after 8am here and we’ve made it onto the next mode of transportation – the indian train service. So I have ample time to try to gather my thoughts with whatever time we have left to burn.

So far India has strongly reminded me of the time I spent in the Philippines. And I’m not just referring to the fact that it’s warm and Asian. It’s so much more than that. I feel like if I didn’t already have that kind of familiarity with the world and different cultures that exist outside the sphere that the United States seems to always function in, I’d be experiencing quite the culture shock. I suppose there is some shock in it because now it’s so much more than what I’ve ever understood. I spent a significant amount of time in high school understanding some of the culture and history of this huge country. There is so much you can learn from books, but there is a whole plethora of information that one can honestly just experience in moments of actually being immersed in the culture they had been reading about.

Knowledge is so much more than just books and I feel like this experience is definitely going to teach me about things other than build upon the knowledge I already have of India. I honestly feel like taking this trip at this part in my life was a good idea. I have already have some confidence in my people skills but it’s something to try to see the world in a completely different manner. This isn’t just a trip I’m taking to bolster an album or a resume, this is something that I know there is going to be some sort of adventure. Not all adventures are easy or come without their challenges and since we’ve arrived, there already have been some challenges that we’ve dealt with. (There aren’t enough words in the universe to capture my exasperation with airport security)

It was incredible to see how different traffic is in the world. Like I know Baguio, Times Square and even the roads of I81 in NEPA have some intense and odd traffic patterns. If people have anxiety about driving in places like those, driving in New Delhi is definitely not something they should just brush off. Motorcycles everywhere, people signaling? Ha not a chance. At least you’ll hear their horns as gentle warnings of where they might be located. One of the cool things about getting to drive so early in the morning, it seemed like an entirely different world driving through the streets of New Delhi. Car horns blaring enough to be on par with the extent of angry New Yorkers attempting the debacle of driving anywhere near Times Square. (And yet, almost the entire group passed out pretty easily during the hour car ride to the sounds of traffic and the hustle of cars all trying to get where they need to be.) I mean I’m still not going to say I prefer any type of traffic over another, since ideally no traffic is the best case scenario. But it was just one of those little city life things that you don’t really think about beyond your own experience.

I mean just this train experience is so much different than anything I’ve really experienced. I’ve been on a variety of trains – I’ve lived and breathed for NYC’s lovely MTA subway lines that act like the veins and arteries for any reasonable New Yorker’s daily life, I’ve shuttled myself from various parts of Philly’s SEPTA orange line, there was that time in Paris we went on the trains and accidently left behind a sophomore because she wasn’t fast enough to get off them and then that super fast train that took us along in France and slightly closer to Spain (I think) but this is completely different.

From what I’m told even just using the bathroom is an experience in and of itself to the point that my professor is honestly putting a post about how American students need to be walked through the process (A process I’m both intrigued and concerned about) It’s like going on Amtrack now that I think about it. There’s some pretty good service, and it goes about a little bit further than your local everyday train but there’s even service of food tea and gigantic bottles of water for one to enjoy. One of the struggles of trying to do this current entry is trying to take in everything we’re going past while trying to stay on task. Part of me wants to call it sensory overload but I’m just loving every second of this. Words trying to come together for this piece while I seemingly lose all possible words to try to capture this experience.

One of the things I wanted to attempt to do before this entire trip was try to follow the lead of other journalists who have done this kind of thing before but the thing is, there is no point. Each journalist brings their own spin on the stories they report on and I honestly hate that the true art of journalism has been getting lost to reporting on a celebrity wearing certain clothes to an event (cause we’ve NEVER heard of someone wearing clothes to a special event before…) This has just been like going to a candy store for me because there are so many methods for me to tell these stories, I could type it up here, vlog about the crazy things I see or just record everything for a podcast. This place is teeming with stories and I can’t even wrap my head around half of them and that honestly excites me. So many stories and I get the chance to capture their essence for just a little bit to be what a journalist is meant to do – to tell the stories and spread the information that people need to know.

We’ve still got hours to go and I’m just itching to look out the window like a little kid. The first vlog should be up on New Year’s Eve to sum up the first few days. A podcast will probably follow along on that day too. Who knows. For now, I’m just going to keep turning the pages on this story to keep finding out more. Til next time. ~KA