India Part I

These are some of the things that we did before the wedding.

Charminar: Which literally means four towers. It was built in 1591 and the story behind it is that the ruler at the time (Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutub Shah) was praying for to end a plague in the city and he vowed that he would build a monument in the very place he was praying if the plague went away.

This was the view from Charminar. And no, those autos aren't parked, everyone is driving/walking and they drive and walk wherever they want. The only reason there isn't people driving on the other side of the street is because there is a median. Another thing that you can't see in the picture is the constant honking. People honk all the time there. And as far as I could tell, they honked when they wanted to pass, someone was in their way, someone got to close to them, they wanted to turn and wanted to make sure that the oncoming traffic stopped, or just because they hadn't honked in a while. I would never be able to drive in India, and I thought that I was going to die every time we got in a car.

In Charminar. The price to get in for Indians is 5 rupees, (the exchange rate when we were there was 46 rupees to every dollar) which is nothing, but the price for foreigners is 100 rupees, which is still very cheap, but still 20 times more expensive!

After visiting Charminar, we had coconut water straight from the coconut. At the time I thought it was the best thing that I had ever tasted, but later I began to wonder if that was because I was really thirsty and dehydrated.

Yes, there is McDonald's even in India, however you won't find a hamburger on the menu. There is no beef sold in any stores.

One evening before the wedding we went out to go sari shopping. It was crazy! There were so many people in the store. There weren't any racks, but instead you sat with a store worker who brought you tons and tons of material until you found the right one you wanted.

One of Bhaskar's nieces. And if it looks like I'm really sweaty, it's because I am. It was so hot all the time and humid as heck. I don't think that I could ever live there because of the constant heat... and I live in Tucson where it is currently 101 degrees at 7:30 at night.

I got a head shot so you couldn't see all the sweat marks on our clothes. But then again, sweating was the only way to stay cool.

The toilet that we used. Not pictured is the shower, but all you have to think of is a bucket and a cup under a spigot. The shower heads that they do have don't work because the water is so hard that they just clog the shower head.

Lunch. I should have put my hand next to all the food because you can't really see how much food there was to eat. I ate about half of the rice (on the left) and I was completely stuffed. While we were there, Bhaskar's family kept telling us that they were concerned about us because we hadn't been eating a lot and they didn't believe us when we told them that we hadn't been hungry the whole time we were there, even though we were only eating about half of what everyone else ate. The first night we ate dinner with the family I noticed that I was the only girl eating with all the boys and when I asked why they told me that it was tradition to have the girls eat after all the men ate. However after that first night, there was always another girl eating with me during dinner, which they probably did on purpose to make me feel comfortable.

It was amazing to me how concerned about our welfare everyone was. They were always making sure that we had enough to drink, and that the water was sanitary (which I was grateful for). Overall, everyone was very nice.