January 9, 2008

After almost a year of anticipation, I had expected to arrive in India and be greeted by a whirlwind of color and sound with vendors pushing bright silk scarves into my hands and maharajahs riding by on elephants. In actuality, we arrived after midnight, half the group didn’t have luggage, we were all in serious need of a shower, and India just seemed bleak and dusty. However, I knew I shouldn’t put too much stock in these jet lagged first impressions (it had been 29 hours since we had left Cincinnati), and the next day, after a good night’s sleep, India’s sleepy streets were suddenly alive with all the vibrancy I expected. Delhi’s 14 million people all seemed to be out at once, either clogging the streets with their trucks and rickshaws or trying to sell us postcards.

First stop was the Lotus Temple, a Bahai house of worship and a very fitting intro to India. We were here to study the many religions of India (especially Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity and Judaism), but the Bahais stress the unity of all religions and mankind, saying that everyone worships the same god but in

different ways. We were also introduced to the practice of removing shoes before entering a temple, something we would do almost every day for the rest of the trip. And Will got the group’s first case of Delhi Belly, which nearly all of us would experience on the trip, no matter how vigilant we were about not drinking the water.

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