India…bring your dirty clothes

India has it places to see, and places where these Indian people really need to get their act together.

With that as a start I will explain the good first, and then move onto the ugly.

Delhi was a great place, very modern and clean. This is where the Taj Mahal is, and it is more beautiful and magnificent than I could have ever expected. The symmetry of this place was unreal. Everything is perfectly aligned and it all flows so well. Not to mention the entire place is made out of marble that shimmers and reflects into different shades and colors as the sun changes its position in the sky. There are ponds everywhere that reflect the image on the Taj, the pictures I got are unreal. I wish that everyone could see it through their own eyes. When I first entered into the complex where the Taj is I got goosebumps, that is how unreal it is. I made a valiant attempt to get a picture at the Taj Mahal with my Nicks Roast Beef bumper sticker, but right when I pulled it out and got in my pose for the picture it was taken right away from me from the security guards. I guess it is a legit crime to have signs and stuff like that inside of the Taj Mahal grounds. But they didn’t say one word about Anthony’s teddy bear that I took millions of pictures with. He is going to love them.
Anthony – I got your bear a new necklace and I traded his old one to a little kid for a taj mahal snow globe key chain haha, its around his arm now. All of the little begger kids wanted that bear so bad, it was pretty funny, they wanted to trade for it and they were all asking me how much I spent on it.

So before I went to the Taj Mahal, I spent 2 days in Varanasi. This place really needs to get its act together. This “holy” river was a complete mess. The Ganges River was really polluted, people were washing their clothes in one part, drinking the water in another, swimming in another, and then at the end burning their deceased relatives and putting the burning body into the river. Not to mention that there was trash everywhere, I don’t know about them but I know that we Greeks treat holy things and staples in our religion with much more respect. Maybe I was just a little culture shocked, but this place was basically back in time. The city of Varanasi itself was totally underdeveloped. Inside of the city there are thousands maybe millions of beggers and homeless. Many of these people born with deformities or became deformed because when they were young their parents purposefully deformed them so they would be a more effective begger. YEAH THAT IS 100 PERCENT TRUE. It is almost as if the price of life in India was very small. I mean if you are willing to deform your child at birth, you clearly do not care whether they live or die on the street. There were more guys on bikes offering rides with a buggy attached than there were cars. It was fun to take one for a day, but to live that day to day is just way over my head. Varanasi also has farm animals everywhere, not tied up or anything, just free roaming as they please. This speaks so much louder than just the visual look of it. It is basically saying that these people, since they can live directly with animals are basically living like animals. Cows in stores, poopin in the streets, and then people will just walk on by like its cool. The pictures I took are just insane. I think the population of Varanasi is around the tens of millions, so its also so packed, add that great BO smell and the cow smell, and the trash, you get quite the attractive stench!

As you can see I got the opportunity to see both sides of India. I saw the beautiful and the straight up hideous. Im sorry for being so blunt and maybe a little too harsh, but I had to update this post quickly as it was fresh in my mind and this was post is exactly how I felt at the time. I really cannot see myself ever making a trip back to India, its sad to say that because it’s the first place on my trip that I truly feel that way and I had higher expectations for a timeless country like India.


Next stop is Thailand in 5 days
Talk to you laterrr
Dean