the total cultural immersion experience

If you are looking for a total cultural immesion experience this group of Plymouth travelers in the sub continent may be just your ticket! There have been so eye opening moments that surpassed by last trek through India in the fall of 2008.

Number one, the ride on the rails. As you may know, our experience has included a 600 kilometer overnight train journey from lush, fecund Kerala to the drier, more arid Tamil Nadu. I had done this trip before but never in a Non Air conditioned, second class, "open air" compartment. When we walked into the rail car at Kottayam, I admit, my jaw dropped. Not what I had expected. (because of the thousands of Hindu Pilgrims coming to the holy shrine at Sabarimala, the trains are packed. tickets are hard to come by)

Yes, we had seats that could be converted into three deck bunks. But fancy? No. Had you wanted to travel across this ancient land in an open air compartment so you could "smell " you way from the Malabar coast to the Bay of Bengal, then this is for you. As I lied in my bunk I could look up at star studded sky, and watch the half moon follow our journey. The smells! from a thousand cooking fires, the stench of unregulated emmisions from a paper plant, from the sweet smell of food to the oderous and unwelcoming smell of a slum.
We smelled it all. All across India.

Picture our environment. A rail car packed with grandmothers and families with children and babies being bed by mothers, people in their saris trying to catchsome sleep. people asleep on the dirty floors between the cars. And food. People bring all their Indian cuisine onto the train, and their Indian music. Its all there.

Sat next to a young man who grew up in a village in Tamil Nadu without electricity, running water,etc.
Now he works for Hewlett Packard, his wife for IBM. He does soft war work for them from a remote location. Bright. So articulate in English. I broke the ice by saying to him the tamil word for thank you which is NUNDRI.  we talked politics. He thinks very highly of Obama.  We talked about what his goals are inlife. He wants to make a different for the village in which he grew up, he wants to give back.

My thought: America: pay attention to these young Indians, so ambitious, so filled with a great work ethic competing for the same jobs as our American youth. 

The rail travel may not have been very fancy. (And we all we constantly checking when our stop was due because station stops are unannounced and we are not good at reading Tamil) but what an education.

As the sun was setting, and casting a warm yellow over the day, I could see Hindu Temples decorated with bright lights (like Christmas lights) because this was a special Hindu holiday in Tamil known as Bongal.

I thought, for all the craziness of this country, its lack of safety, its inconvenniences that are on a scale most well off Americans could not imagine,there is something here to love. And I do.

Peter Luckey