Varanasi is known to be a religious hub in India, attracting hindus and buddhists from all over the world. The city is located on the banks of the ganges, creating a beautiful ambience for visitors to come and worship by the river. When walking on its banks it is common to see hindu devotees bathing in its waters to purify themselves, and to wash away sin. Although ...
SOU 375: Urban India
Varanasi: Spirituality Is In Its Identity
Like any other city in India, you would expect extremely crowded streets, no organized traffic, a bellow of horns, and the roaring of voices trying to communicate from shops and sidewalks. Varanasi definitely contains all the elements of a classic Indian city that we have seen, but the chaotic elements multiply into the most overwhelming sensory experience we have witnessed so ...
Electric Autos, Air Pollution, and Solar Power – Does the Future Look Bright for India?
Last week our group visited the Taj Mahal in Agra and did a tour of New Delhi. The Taj was beautiful and the tour was stimulating, but there was one thing I noticed that each had in common: electric autorickshaws. These autorickshaws have an electric battery powered engine instead of one that is diesel or gas powered. Because they don’t have a combustion engine, they are ...
Rolling Chapati with Strangers
Take your shoes off, cover your head, wash your hands and step down into the flowing stream to cleanse your feet of an impurity they may carry. Once you have prepared yourself, follow the white marble steps to a gold garnished temple that has enchanting music drawing you to its doors. After three months in India, I finally stepped foot into my first Sikh temple, Gurudwara ...
Poverty and Urbanization in India
For our first day in Delhi, one of the places we visited was the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib Sikh Temple. The architecture of the temple immediately catches the eye as the golden domes shine in Delhi’s bright morning sun. Walking into the temple, the intricate designs displayed on the walls match its outwardly beauty. Sikhs entered and bowed down in front of their holy scripture, ...
Final Thoughts on My Time in India
We are blasting through our Northern Tour of India and at the same time that it is exhausting, different, and just generally overwhelming, I have also somehow found the time to reflect on the entire trip here. There are some constants on life in India that I’ve noticed and some things that are different depending on where you are, in the north or the south and if you are in a ...
Air Pollution: Don’t Let our Future Go Up in Smoke
As I walked out of the airport in Delhi, we were greeted with a thick brownish-grey smog in the horizon. Immediately it felt like home - Santiago, the capital of Chile – which is also one of most the highly air polluted cities of the world. Back home when I wake up, I enjoy the clean air because the heavy-duty air filter in my bedroom is constantly on. The only way to ...
The Ganges: Pure and Polluted
The Ganges River, or Gangaji, is the second most polluted river in the world, according to science. However, if you ask one of the bathers in Varanasi, they will argue that nothing can pollute the river because it is holy. Science and religion have different definitions of pollution, which has had catastrophic effects on the Ganges. Last week, I visited Varanasi, one of ...
My experience with children in the streets of India
As my semester abroad comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting upon one aspect of urban India that is present in all the cities that I’ve visited during the past three and a half months. Whether in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Varanasi, Agra, or Delhi, poor children roam the streets either begging for money or selling small trinkets around tourist sites. As a pre-med student ...
Flooding In Chennai
John Williams Flooding in Chennai Poor infrastrure and harsh monsoon seasons cause tremendous flood damage in India. The Chennai floods of 2015 costed india’s economy $3 billion in repairs. The cities problem derives from industrial developers encroaching upon the Ennore creek and Kosasthalaiyar rivers. This in turn has caused hundreds to suffer, who ...
