5 January 2016

The day after you see a world wonder just has me all sorts of out of whack. We took a look at Fatehpur Sikri and I honestly am feeling a wide variety of emotions.

I’m still feeling a little out of it but significantly better than the day I was benched. I wasn’t aware of much of the history of Fatehpur Sikri but there were just a few things that really stood out to me: wishes, poverty and unexpected surprises.

One of the neat things that we noticed adjacent to Fatehpur Sikri was that there was another location that we got the chance to walk around it. It was kinda disorienting because as soon as you walked in, those vendors all but pounced on the opportunity to try to force us to buy things. Harassment via street vendors is nothing new to me, but the whole thing of seeing little kids constantly trying to push the sales just as much was really starting to unnerve me.

Perhaps it’s the whole thing about being born and raised in the Western part of the world or what not, I’m just not used to seeing kids work like this. I’m used to the idea of kids being kids, not constantly trying to converse in bits of English to sell us some odd trinket for 20 rupees. Once our group found a hold on our settings, we wandered along to some volunteer selling cloths.

The man would go on to explain this whole process that someone could undertake to make wishes. To say I was skeptical was the understatement of the century. A 100% success rate of all wishes just seems so outrageous. As someone who spent many a wish on eyelashes, wishbones and shooting stars and usually came up with nothing except a hope whispered into the void, I knew there was no possible way that one place could have that much of a success rate.

But if I am anything, I am stubborn as all hell. So even if I’m skeptical about anything, I’m still going to give it a shot because some of the best stories come from what have little to no expectations about. I put the few hundred rupees down and went along. I listened to the instructions and did as I was told. I made my three wishes and went on my way.

Before I could really process or think about my wishes and hesitance to even believe that tying three different knots could have a 100% chance of improving my life, the universe decided to give me something else to really think about. Yes, we saw an excessive amount more of young people trying to sell us things. (One of my friends and I were usually left unbothered because our entire demeanor shouted how much we did not want anything to do with what they were selling, even to the point that some of the children were angry at us for closing the window so they could continue to shove the merchandise in our faces before the bus returned us to our other bus) But the surprise from the universe came from when we had lunch.

Our professor hadn’t steered us wrong at all when it came to deciding what we should eat in that specific location. She helped explain everything so we wouldn’t be completely floored when we encountered a new food and also made sure that we wouldn’t be swindled for being foreigners if she was around. The place we had found ourselves eating at was no 5-star restaurant. It was alright in most aspects visibly. We were told to be careful with our things and that the food might not be the best, but we had to work with what we had. To all our surprise, the food was pretty good. This middle of the highway random restaurant had some of the best naan we had on the entire trip thus far. The prices were outrageous but I was completely shocked at how much I enjoyed the food.

I guess I was being taught a lesson once more, or maybe even being reminded of my experience in 2015. I completely went into 2015 with little to no expectations, even expecting the worst and ended up having one of the best years in my entire life. Expectations can ruin things when they’re not met and this was my reminder that life isn’t so bad when you just go into things with an open mind and not expecting much. I wonder if this is something I should consider for these wishes.

Would I love for them to come true? Of course I would. But if I keep expecting them to fail or succeed, the joy in them is reduced. Thanks for the heads up universe. I have no idea what else is ahead for this trip, but once I’m more recovered from this nonsense cold, I have a feeling it’s going to be something I’ll never forget. Til next time ~KA