INDIA (part 1)

If you've been reading along by now you'd know that I recently took a trip to India. If you're new here, I WENT TO INDIA!!! First I'll give a little background about my trip: At my school we have one week where groups of students either travel around the world, the US, or just stay in RVA. Most of the trips tend to do a deal of community service. We had two "community service" days teaching kids, but they sure didn't feel like it.

Here's the thing, I lost just about all of my photos from my trip, except for the ones I shared with the group. I would have posted these earlier... ya know... if my computer hadn't crashed. Bless Google Drive for photo sharing... to clarify, all these photos are mine, and they are also the only ones I have. I took about 800, I have about 30...

yeah.

BUT! They're great photos that I do have! They capture the main events of my trip! And I still have my video! So I'm okay :)

First I wanted to start off with a picture of the group above.

We had a layover in Dubai on the way over and got to spend a day there! It was so wild, everything is the biggest and the boldest and the best!! Completely different from India.

The Lotus Temple.

We arrived in India at night on Saturday. India is 10.5 hours ahead of where I live, it didn't take long to adjust... It was only impossible to readjust coming home.

Above, The Laxminarayan Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Laxminarayan, which usually refers to Vishnu, The Preserver.
 
Don't get thrown off by the swastikas, in Hinduism they mean good fortune, luck and well being. It also has a variation of meanings in other religions. They were all over India, all meaning good things.

meaning good fortune, luck and well-being

meaning good fortune, luck and well-being

Gandhi's last steps

One of the most fascinating places we went was Gandhi's home. We went to the home where Gandhi stayed for the last 144 days of his life. When he was living in just one room. above are the exact steps he took from his bed room to the place where he got assassinated. I learned so much about Gandhi, he really was an incredible man.

Humayun's tomb, modeled after the Taj Mahal

And of course... The Taj

awkwardly the only one looking into my camera.... :P

The Taj Mahal was so insanely beautiful. Seeing it in photos online I knew what it looked like and had my expectations knowing it was going to be big and luxurious. But seeing it in person? That's a whole other story. It was incredible. We had to be bare foot when actually going into the building, the marble was so smooth and intericate. Unfortunatly (but kinda fortunatly because it was so darn fun) it practically monsooned while we were there. We were drenched! The photo of all the girls above was before the rain started. But believe me, it was CRAZY. I lost my photos of the inside, and didn't get any of the back because at that point it was just too wet.

There were SO many dogs in India! Mainly this sort of dog, but the weirdest most out of place dog
I saw was a pug... It was a tiny pug just running up the empty road in the mountains. Like, what?!

More photos coming tomorrow!!!