Blog | Oct 2, 2010 | 0 Comments

Welcome to India!

NAMASTE! Many thoughts and prayers over the past 3 months have been centered around this very time. Outreach has begun. We finally arrived in India after about 40 hours of travel. Travel was smooth even with 13 hours or so of layover time. I’m so proud of our team sticking it through-focused and with a great attitude. We are trying to fight to stay awake til 8pm Delhi time so we can fight jet lag! A hard task when my body is thinking its the middle of the night! If anything will wake a person up its riding in a taxi across Delhi!

I’m absolutely loving the Indian people and I quickly am learning “Indian people” is way to broad of a term for the diversity of culture here. India is a melting pot of religion, nations, fashion, crafts, and food. Religion is in your face. Everywhere you look is a temple or shrine even in the Rickshaws. Our plane ride on Indian Airlines wasn’t at all like the rest of the flights! It took a turn from Asian to Indian. I struck up a conversation with a mother sitting next to me and she taught me some basic Hindi and some good sights to see in Delhi and North India. Her main question to me was if I thought Barak Obama is a Muslim haha! We had a good conversation about God, adoption and American vs Indian Culture.

Where we are staying in Delhi is more Tibetan than Indian. Which is cool because it really has helped us to get a heart for Tibetan refugees before we head to the center of Tibetan Buddhism and home of the Dali Lama, Dharamshala.

India truly is an assault on the senses! The smells are the full range from nasty sewage to delicious curry, spices and chai tea. Conversations flow easily especially if you are a westerner, but sometimes it is to lure you into shops. Getting ripped off is pretty much normal even when you are on alert. Usually its only a matter of a few dollars though. Our host says there are three prices, one for Westerners, one for tibetans and one for local indians. You can probably guess which way the scale goes. Its hard to maintain trust here, which is kind of sad but God is teaching us how to rely on him to see the good in all and use discernment on who to trust. For the most part, people here are genuinely friendly and very hospitable! I’m excited to get to know people further than the first impression. Next stop, Dharamshala!

This post was suppose to be posted earlier but because of lack of internet, I posted it now. Also photo upload was so slow so I’ll try and get more photos up soon! :) Love you all.

Author: Calvin

My wife and I are part of the Awaken Community. We desire restoration and reconciliation in the broken and lost. We both love God and are committed to following his will. I enjoys taking photographs of my travels as well as blogging about awesome things God does or teaches me. To see more photos, visit our gallery. More about Calvin and Camille