India at a Glance

Well, we finally made it home from our two-week trip to India, and what an incredible experience it was! I felt like I was in sponge-mode the whole time just trying to soak up all the details and capture every memory.  Hopefully through these posts I'll be able to re-create some of India for you.  Thanks to Patrick's incredible photography skills, we have many amazing pictures to share as well.

My first impression of the country was how much it reminded me of other places we've been.  The tuk tuks everywhere (in India called auto rickshaws) reminded me of Thailand, while the lack of traffic patterns and street vendors reminded me of Egypt.  Some of the houses even reminded me of Japan.  But the longer we stayed in India, the more I realized it's in a category all its own.  In many ways I couldn't compare it with any other place in the world.


One thing we had been preparing ourselves to experience was the extreme poverty of India.  We saw it more in the northern cities, but there were people everywhere who seemed to just be sitting around waiting.  Waiting for what, I'm not really sure.  We found many people sleeping right there on the ground, no mat or anything.  Despite it all, I was surprised at how few people approached us asking for money.  I had anticipated that we would constantly be surrounded by outstretched hands and hungry eyes, but we encountered relatively little of that.

Another exciting aspect of India is the traffic.  Perhaps exciting is the wrong word.  Death-defying seems more appropriate.  The general consensus seems to be that traffic laws are for sissies.  I figured anyone who is ready to take their life in their hands to risk driving in India had better have made his peace with God.  We were lucky enough to have our own drivers for the two weeks we were there, any they all expertly avoided many an accident.  What is still a miracle to me is how Patrick and I survived being pedestrians.  On more than one occasion I was sure I was about to meet my end at the hands of a tuk tuk or motorcycle driver.

Our first week in India was spent doing touristy things in touristy places.  We saw lots of beautiful monuments and heard a lot about the history of India.  To be honest, this didn't interest me as much as I thought it would.  While I was awed by the beauty of the Taj Mahal (as anyone would be to see it in person), I just couldn't get excited about the old India.  What I wanted to experience was the real, living India of today.  That's why the second half of our trip was so much more meaningful to me.  But more on that later.

As you probably know, the whole point of our going to India was to visit the two children we sponsor through Compassion International.  The story of those visits warrants its own post, so I'll write more details on that later.  Suffice it to say, the few hours we spent with each of our kids was incredible and life changing in many ways.

Now that we're home I feel like my head is still reeling with all the things we saw, felt, and did over the last two weeks.  I think in some ways I wasn't ready to come home, because there was so much of India that we didn't get to see.  You'd have to spend months there to see everything!  God really did bless this trip in so many ways, and I'm thankful for our family and friends who were praying for us while we were away.  Those prayers were certainly felt!