There is no better way of seeing and understanding India’s capital than by taking a ride on back a rickshaw through the streets of Old Delhi. Built in 1639 as the Mughal capital Shahjahanabad ( شاه جهان آباد) the intensely crowded and dilapidated streets of Old Delhi remain the heart and soul of the city and are a sight to see. For the narrow, shadowy streets of Old Delhi offer a glimpse into what life was once like and still is for millions of Indians.
On back of a rickshaw, be prepared to be thrust into humanity and taken away by all one’s senses. The sights, smells, sounds, feel and taste of the place is enough to put any reasonable person over the edge. It is an overwhelming experience especially in the midst of Delhi’s infamous summer heat with highs reaching the unbearable 120 degrees. Yet it is an experience of a lifetime that will shed light onto this vibrant country filled with complexity and contradictions in every aspect of life.
Here are the photos taken from the bumpy ride on back of a rickshaw through the narrow streets of Old Delhi ( I was unable to stop so all these photos were taken in motion). I left the ones of my driver in this set so you can see how incredibly narrow these streets are to manage on a rickshaw. Sadly, most rickshaw drivers barely make ends meet and oftentimes live on the street next to their rickshaw fighting to survive. Another tragedy of Old Delhi is the state of the buildings. Many are falling apart and recently one collapsed to the ground in the middle of the night while 35 people slept right through their death. It is one of many sad realities of life on the streets of India.
Climbing on board. Note I am wearing a scarf over my head to keep the intense sun off.
The last three days in Delhi have been a complete whirlwind. We have been on the move visiting our NGO partners for Social Good Moms to learn more about their work on the ground. Being in Delhi is like being at the forefront of humanity. The buzz of mass civilization frenzies around you and engulfs all your senses. There is so much going on at any one moment that it is hard not to blink your eyes in amazement. To make the experience of being here even more surreal, the temperature has been dizzyingly high averaging around 114 degrees F/46C. In a crowded city of over 20 million people, the heat just adds to the intensity of the place.
Our first day was spent resting and recovering after our long journey to India. It took us over 30 hours to finally arrive in Delhi and the time change (Delhi is 11.5 hours ahead of Minneapolis time) has been hard to adjust to. Day two was spent visiting a small Delhi-based NGO called Protsahan that provides a unique approach to education for street children in the urban slums by using the arts. Day three was spent visiting India-based NGO Pratham who also works in education for underpriviledged children in the urban slums of India. Both visits were amazing and we learned a lot about how these NGOs are working with these children to give them a future.
I will go into the specific details of each visit and what we learned in a future post. However, in the meantime I wanted to share a small selection of instagram photos I’ve taken over the past three days in India to give you a feel for our trip so far.
Sometimes getting there is half the fun. Traveling half way across the world is no easy feat and as long as you maintain a positive attitude and sense of humor than it can actually be quite an adventure.
I began my journey to India at nine am on Sunday, May 19th and four flights and 36 hours later, I finally arrived at my final destination, Delhi. As always, there were lots of bumps along the way, a few which began before I even left. The physical journey was long and arduous, yet the mental journey has literally just begun.
As much as I love to travel, leaving is always the hardest thing. The days before a big trip are always jam-packed with preparation as I run around in a mad dash trying to get everything done. I’m always stressed and always feel mixed emotions about leaving. A lot of excitement, anticipation tagged along with that not so pleasant anxiety I feel about leaving the kids. I know it is the mother in me. But leaving home for a long trip always unsettles my nerves. As soon as I’m on the plane, I’m fine. It is just that terrible goodbye and a little bit of worry.
Sunday morning was no different than before. After a stressful couple of days, I woke up with those usual pretravel jitters. By nine am the car was loaded with my suitcase and we were off to the airport. As we neared the terminal, my six-year-old daughter began to cry. “Mama, why do you have to go to India” she asked between sobs. My little girl always has a way of getting right inside my heart. I felt my stomach tighten. “Because I’m trying to save the world” I answered steadily. “But why do you have to do it?” she questioned. And for a moment I was speechless and stunned by her question, coming from a kindergartener. “Because someone has to do it” I responded.
Two and a half years ago a life-changing trip to Nepal and India opened my mind. I have traveled all my life but for some reason this trip in particular was like nowhere else I’d been. I had never seen poverty like I did in India and Nepal. I had just finished reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s “Half the Sky” which educated me on so many issues about women and poverty that I never understood. The book has a strong message that anyone can do something to change the world. No matter how big or small, you can make a difference. This belief prompted me to start my blog and use my voice as a way to share my experiences around the world and educate others on what is happening sometimes behind the scenes.
Last fall I began writing as a member of the Global Team of 200, a group of mom bloggers trying to change the world by using their voice to educate others on maternal and infant health, education, children, nutrition, human trafficking, water and sanitation and other important issues that relate to poverty. The more I learned about these issues, the more passionate I’ve become about trying to help make the world a better place.
I’ve learned that you cannot travel with a blind eye. You must always have a “third-eye” so you can see everything – good and bad. So many times people choose to ignore the bad because they don’t want to see it. The world will not change and become a better place for all if we continue to ignore fixable problems. As a global citizen, it is our duty to help the millions of voiceless people who are suffering silently.
As I embarck on this journey, I intend to do whatever I can to have an open-mind and take everything in. I am sure it will be yet another life-changing, eye-opening experience. I look forward to sharing my journey with you all.
Stay tuned…. We have started a tumblr blog at to follow our trip. You can also follow us along on Twitter at hashtag #SocialGoodMomsIndia.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”. -Mahatma Gandhi
“Building global connections both online and offline is the cornerstone of Mom Bloggers for Social Good” says founder Jennifer James who heads up one of the world’s largest social good sites for moms who blog.
On Sunday, I am honored to be traveling to India along with Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers for Social Good, to meet face to face with some of our partners as well as meet fellow Social Good Moms who live in India. Our time in India will be spent learning about the issues we cover: Maternal and newborn health, food and water poverty, sanitation issues, and education for women and girls.
It’s going to be an amazing time, full of lots of insight into the advocacy work we do as well as the culture, people and situation in India. I have visited India briefly in 2010 when I was en route to Nepal and found India to be one of the most dynamic places I’ve ever been. It will be truly fascinating to see India once again through a different set of eyes and mindset. I will have my “third-eye” waiting and ready to capture and soak in as much knowledge as I can.
During our stay, I’ll be sharing my journey via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and of course on my blog. I hope you follow along on this journey! It is bound to be eye-opening!
I would like to thank Sevenly for being a trip sponsor. They are an amazing organization. Check our their website here to learn more about the fabulous things they do.
It is a huge honor for me to be invited to go on this social good trip as I’m certain I will learn so much more about the work I’m so passionately advocating for. I am so excited to share what I learn with you. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I don’t think we can see the world without learning about the issues each place we visit face. It is up to us to not only be a good tourist, but to be a good citizen and help change the world we live in to make it a better place for all. Thanks for your support!
“It is impossible to live without failing at something – unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default”. – J.K. Rowling
This week has been a bit hairy so I thought I’d post some of my favorite photos of mountains I’ve hiked as they always calm my soul. Photos above from France, Nepal and Guatemala. This fall, I will be adding Bolivia to my list of great hikes.
I’ve been bursting with excitement to tell you all some wonderful news! In one month, I am off to some amazing places and will be engaged in the most travel I’ve done in years! Some of it is for pleasure and well, the other trip is a complete surprise. So let me give you a couple clues on where I’m going….
I always like to follow the news on places I’ve visited before. It just so happens that China has been in the news big time recently and not in a good way. Apparently Beijing has been impacted by some of the most dangerous levels of pollution in history and it isn’t going away anytime soon. The pollution is at such hazardous levels that the Communist Governement has declared emergency measures to try to decrease the horrendous black soot in the air that is unhealthy for people to inhale. The air quality is so incredibly bad that people are advised not to venture outdoors.
Per today’s New York Times article titled Smog Blankets China’s Capital, “In the past three decades, China has adopted a growth-at-any-cost attitude to build its economy, and the resulting environmental damage is now widespread and severe”.
I was in Beijing a little over a year ago and had been shocked by the thick layer of pollution and smog blanketing and strangling the city like a murderer. Every single picture I shot while in Beijing was a huge disappointment given the pesky pollution that wouldn’t budge. It was slightly better in Shanghai yet still worrisome.
As more Chinese move up the ranks into the middle class and buy more cars, there is bound to be more problems with pollution and the damage to the environment will be unbearable. It points again to the need for all governments to come together and agree on how they should address climate change and the impact that over 7 billion people are making on this earth. Of course, Americans with their big, gas-guzzling cars need to help out too. We all do. But I hope something is done before it is too late.
I’m leaving you with a few photos I took while in Beijing last year and processed them with a new filter app called PhotoForge which I love. I’ve also been experimenting more with Instagram as well. If you are interested in checking me out there, I am under Thirdeyemom.
This week’s Sunday Post theme by Jakesprinter is roads. I couldn’t help but think of this theme in both a literal and metaphorical way. As there was one road that I traveled on while hiking the Annapurna trail in Nepal, that changed my life forever and set me on my future path to where I am today.
As many of you know, In January I attended the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life Summit along with 45 other fellow Americans, who will be working hard to raise awareness and funding to provide vaccines to impoverished nations around the world.
Since January, I have been steadily following all news vaccine-related and have been blown away by India’s quest to become a polio free nation. In one of the most populous nations in the world that has many places that are extremely difficult to reach, the massive effort to vaccinate India’s children and wipe the deadly polio virus away, has been a hair-raising feat.
Photo above of the female lion which is always located on the west side of a building while the male lion, which is considered more important in ancient times, is located on the east side, towards the rising sun.
Imagine living in a place where your reproductive life was controlled by the government. A place that not only controlled the number of children you were allowed to have but also the timeframe. A place that enforced stiff fines, allowed forced sterilization and even forced abortions when you were breaking the law. Imagine living in remote, impoverished parts of rural China. This is what life is like for most women in these far off, often forgotten parts of the world, a place that accounts for millions of China’s 1.3 billion people.
Photo above of me in Beijing in late October 2011. I thought about photo shopping this picture as there is a car in the way (ha) but then again, this is China. This is the real China and the reality of the situation is that there are lots of people and it is hard to ever get a decent photo of anything, especially in front of a tourist site like the Forbidden City!
As they say in life, all good things must come to an end. Right? That is how I feel about my China series. It has been over two months since I returned from my trip to China yet for some reason leaving this post series behind feels like a painful divorce. I keep trying to move on, to gently push it away, but it is still there bothering me and looking me straight in the eye.
Although China wasn’t my favorite place that I’ve traveled to, it was perhaps the most fascinating place that I’ve been to. I believe it is due to many things. An enormously rich culture filled with traditions that go back thousands of years. A country that is so different from my own which is always interesting, perplexing and thrilling to try to uncover and understand. And finally, being there at the right moment in time, as the Asian Tiger reigns and soars.
The transformation of this country over the last twenty-five years has been mind-boggling. To see the contradictions of old versus new all wrapped together like a garbled package in one place just blew me away. My mind was constantly challenged and awoken to explore this place and comprehend what I saw. It took months and I’m still thinking about it. Yes, I was only there a short time. But wow, did I learn a lot in that minuscule amount of time. For a pensive traveler, that is the best gift one can receive.
So now I say farewell to China and my posts. I do have one more post coming out on World Mom’s Blog next week about China’s controversial One-Child Policy which I will include a link on this blog. Yet for now I’m saying goodbye to China posts and moving on. I will still passionately continue to read about China in the news and through novels. There is hardly a day when China isn’t mentioned somewhere in the papers. It will be interesting to see what the future brings to China. Happy New Year, China! May the year of the Dragon be good!
Author’s note: This is the last art on a three post series on my trip to a Chinese Water Village.
After a fascinating two-hour speed tour through lovely Zhouzhuang, it was time to head out and catch our ride back into Shanghai before the horrendous weekend traffic arrived. Our tour guide Gloria told us that traffic in urban cities was particularly bad on Fridays because many of the migrant factory workers returned home to their villages. It was nearing two pm and we were getting close to hitting the danger zone when it comes to weekend traffic. Yet, we had to do at least a little shopping!
As with any tourist destination, Zhouzhuang has its specialties and we were ready to discover them in breakneck speed.
This is the entrance to Zhouzhuang before the actual water village starts. As you can imagine, it is stocked full with Chinese shops selling silk, art, tea and other local goodies. Gloria warned us to not buy any silk because oftentimes it is not real 100% silk as the label claims. She said that it is usually fake here unless you buy it at the source, a silk factory.
As you enter town, you see storefronts full of these tasty local treats….pork feet including toes, snouts and whatever other part of a pig available, is dipped and baked in this bean sauce…a messy, local specialty that you can get to go. I can’t imagine how messy it would be eating on the go! Yet of course I saw plenty of people doing it.
Another local treasure is crayfish like these. They were of course alive and I’m not sure how they are eaten. Since I’m not keen on this kind of gourmet indulgence, I passed. I am sure they are good and not as crazy as eating a scorpion. Yet, they did not look that appetizing to me.
The Hairy Crab is the local delicacy of Zhouzhuang as it is caught right outside the water village in the connecting lakes. Gloria informed us that tourists from all around the world come to the village just to eat these treasures and they are in season in late Fall.
This crab is saying hello to me!
This is the lake surrounding the village where the crabs are caught and that takes the fisherman all the way to Shanghai.
Zhouzhuang is also known for its spectacular fresh water pearls and delicious oyster. There were plenty of pearl shops in town and Gloria brought us to her favorite one to browse the pearls.
They were beautiful and beyond cheap.
My dad bought my mother a fresh-water pearl necklace. It was a very good deal to say the least.
While I purchased myself a pair of $3 (no joke) pearl earrings for myself and another pair for my sister. I wear them all the time and adore them. You could never find a pair of pearl earrings for $3 in the States.
As we left the water village, Gloria pointed out the hairy crabs boats and companies where the fisherman set off to capture them.
As we left Zhouzhuang, Gloria opened up more about her life. She is a mother of one child and her family owns their own apartment, a huge deal, outside of Pudong. She commutes an hour to and from work each day via bus. She is quite proud to have a college degree as her parents were part of the Cultural Revolution thus were shipped off to work in the countryside and never were able to go to university.
Gloria is very proud of China and where it is headed. We talked about the huge raise in the standard of living and the mass exodus of peasants leaving the countryside and coming into the big cities to work in factories. Many of these families leave their children behind to be raised by their grandparents and see them only on weekends. It is a tough life yet the pay in a factory is much more than in rural China. Thus despite the hardships and long hours, they are happier earning more money and hopefully giving their children a brighter future.
What I found most interesting about my conversation with Gloria was her beliefs on the three forbidden “T”‘s: Tibet, Tiananmen Square and Taiwan. I am not sure if what she told me was the “standard party line” that she had to say since she is a tour guide or if in her heart she actually believes what she is saying. Her beliefs on Tibet is that it was “rescued by the Chinese from savagery and barbarians” and that basically the Tibetans were treated like “slaves”. On Tiananmen Square, she stated that the military had to attack the people to save them from the “gangs” that were destroying the city. Finally, Taiwan was more or less the same kind of rationale. Like Tibet, Taiwan has always belonged to the Chinese and so forth.
I found her beliefs bewildering and somewhat disconcerting for these “truths” do not truly represent reality and it was coming from the young, college-educated generation. It made me wonder what truly most Chinese really believe happened and what they truly think about the Communist Regime. Perhaps we will never know the truth.
