Not everything about India is lovely and magical like some of my prior posts may portray. While there is an endless amount of beautiful things to see and experience here, there are equally as many devastating or uncomfortable things that take longer to adjust to. I am still struggling to accept the dirtyness of the streets, the poverty, the staring, and the bugs.

Garbage lines the street sides. Dirt is constantly flying in your eyes and sticking to your sweaty body. Naked children are climbing around in the trash piles with no parents in sight. Sometimes there are holes in the sidewalks and the open sewers are exposed down below. At many of the monuments the locals will throw their trash on the ground or stick it in a structures crevice. The tree knots will be filled with trash as well. I want to pick it all up, and sometimes I try.

As you probably can imagine, with dirty garbage comes nasty bugs. Bugs are everywhere. Literally. They’re crawling on your pillow, in the sugar jar, crawling up your legs…Everywhere. Flies will land on you throughout meals, giant ants crawl across my keyboard when I’m typing, and itchy mosquito bites don’t phase me anymore. The mosquitos in India aren’t your typical American mosquitos. They are professionals. You don’t hear them buzzing around you, they sneak in like a ninja and attack. I didn’t even see my first mosquito here until a week or two in.

The staring. I’ve decided it must be culturally acceptable in India to stare. Since I’m an obvious foreigner, the staring is extreme. We get ice cream at the same hotel restaurant by our house at least once a week. Every single time the entire kitchen staff will be peering over the wall, pointing, smiling and staring at us for our entire meal. Sometimes they’ll take pictures with their phones. It’s creepy and has been challenging to get use to.  On trains or buses the multiple hour-long stares become so uncomfortable that I put my scarf or blanket over my head and shoulders for most of the ride. A fun way to get the point across, that you don’t want to be stared at, is to stare right back at the person and hold the gaze really hard, and then do a sharp eye-brow raise. Or make a ridiculous face. Or pick your nose. The latter has backfired though-the guy just held his stare and picked his too. I’ve found if I don’t respectfully laugh things off, then India becomes a struggle.

I am here to observe, and learn, but I realize I may never understand. I’ve found that the girls staying here who expect to “understand” India or affect injustice are going crazy. A lesson I’ve learned is that my feelings of amazement, disgust, or shock are my feelings alone, and I can’t project them onto others here. When the little hungry children are begging for money I want to give them all I have, but I know this will only encourage their parents to keep them out of school and send them out into the middle of the busy streets to do it again. I give them my granola bars when I have them though. I feel so bad and uncomfortable riding the cycle rickshaw with the tired old man biking, but by denying him he’d lose out on income for the day. I am constantly forced to ask myself what the moral thing to do is, and I find myself so unsure at times.

This brings me to why going to Keoladeo National Park this weekend was highly needed. There is only so much horn honking, garbage piling, sewer smelling, creepy staring, and children begging a person can handle before they question why they chose to live in India for 3 months.

Peace. Trees. Quiet. Green. Clean. Animals. Comfort. Home. Keoladeo allowed me to refresh mentally and physically, and introduced me to another beauty of India. Keoladeo National park is located in a little Rajasthan city called Bharatpur. The national park is also a world famous bird sanctuary. We rode bicycles throughout the park. The forest reminded me of forests in Minnesota at first with the deciduous trees, grasses, and swamps. For a while I felt like I was at home biking through the Elm Creek Park Reserve. Then palm trees were randomly added to the mix of vegetation along with vine-like trees. Definitely not MN anymore. I didn’t care about the bird sanctuary aspect initially because i’ve never been big on bird watching. I was wrong. The birds we saw were incredible! We came across a mini lake FILLED with huge birds, just hanging out in trees in the lake center. We just sat there for a good hour and watched them. When they flew they looked like pterodactyls! It was cool, unexpected, and changed my mind on bird watching.

I read all about India being a country of contrast before I came here, and I thought I understood. After living here for 5 weeks now, I don’t think it was possible for me to fully understand the truth in that statement until now. Until having experienced it first hand, in many many forms.