India Inquiries?

Hey everyone! My India trip is quickly approaching and you all must be on the farmost edges of your seats waiting to hear about it!

[what i imagine you must be feeling]

First of all, I am bringing my laptop. Thus, I will try and put up at least a short post every day that I have internet. No promises, but I will try!

Also, for the days I miss (or just extra-curricular , we have a cute lil' class blog! (harleyschreck.wordpress.com)

Each of us puts one post up during the trip! It should be updated every day between January 4th (the day we arrive) and 20th (two days before we return).
Now, I put the link up under my Followers to your right. Look at it any time you wish!

Now to answer the question everyone is asking:
Where the heck in India are you even going, Christie?
Valid question, guys. I shall illustrate with some images I stole from Google maps.

This is the general order of things: Chennai, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Delhi, Chennai. 

[Chennai: January 3rd-11th and 19th-22nd]

Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu in southern India. 4.9 million people live there--it is the fifth most populous city in India (note that Minneapolis only has 390,000)!

A few things we'll do there are: work in the slums with a women's Christian college, visit an art museum, see the tomb of St. Thomas (The apostle! Legend says he was the first to bring Christianity to India), meet with business people and possibly swim.

Then we fly all the way up to Delhi:

[Delhi: January 11th-14th and 16th-19th]

Fist of all, I just want to point out how CLOSE we will be to the fucking Himalayas!! I hope we can see them from Delhi ^_^. Oh, and you can still see Chennai at the very bottom of the picture.

Within Delhi is New Delhi--the country's capital. It's separate in a way, sort of like the District of Colombia is its own territory. This city is the 2nd largest in India, 8th largest in the world--15.9 freaking million residents!

In Delhi, we get to see the Red Fort and Jama Masjid mosque! These are big deals if you are a history nerd like myself.

The Jama Masjid was built by Akbar, everyone's favorite Mughal (Muslim) ruler. He built lots of things, and was also pretty liberal and unique. For example, the reason he built the Jama Masjid was to dedicate it to a Sufi (very liberal Muslim who has some Hindu traditions too) that predicted the number of children Akbar would have. The Sufi's tomb is here too.

And the Red Fort was built  in 1639 by Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan, nearly the last of the great Mughal emperors (his son, Aurangzeeb was kind of a jerk and destroyed a bunch of non-Islamic artifacts). This is the same guy who built the Taj Mahal for his wife! Oh, I'll stop now, but here is a small photo from Introduction to Indian Architecture displaying the Red Fort.

[grand, eh?]

Unfortunately, I just spent a bunch of time rambling excitedly about these places, but we might not even get to go inside them... there is a possibility we will only see them... perhaps just through a car/bus window. Still pretty exciting though, right? Kind of :).

Other things we'll do in Delhi include (but are not limited to): visit a huge history museum (nerd alert!), see the U.S. Embassy, go to a Bollywood movie, and hang out with a Christian youth group.

THEN we go on to Agra... the place every Indian tourist has to be...

[Agra: January 14th-15th]

That's right, folks--the Taj Mahal!! Woot! My teacher says even after seeing the millions of pictures of it that most of us have, he was still impressed. Yay :]

Then, right away in the morning of the 15th, we head over to Jaipur:

[Jaipur: January 15th-16th]

Here we get to see an entire city built by Akbar, which was capital of the Mughal empire for only 15 years, because after that they ran out of water. Oops.

[a kind of shitty picture from the same book as before]

We also get to see another museum and an observatory from the 1700's :D

Then, friends, we head back to Delhi and then Chennai.

Then home!

Wow, sorry for the long-winded explanation, but I can't help it--I get excited!

See ya!

P.S. The Trip in a Nutshell for Future Reference

• Jan. 2-3: Flying for hours on end.
• 3-11: Chennai.
• National Art Gallery
• work in slums
• visit nursing home
• St. Thomas's tomb
  
• 11-14: Delhi.
• Bollywood movie
• Red Fort
• Gandhi memorial
• U.S. Embassy
  
• 14-15: Agra.
• Taj Mahal
  
• 15-16: Jaipur.
• historic red city capital (Fatepur Sikri) 
• observatory
  
• 16-19: Delhi.
• hang out with youth group
• work with children
  
• 19-22: Chennai.
• beach resort
• ancient, elaborate, Hindu rock carvings at Mahabalipuram (700 AD-ish)
• 22: Home again!