On the Road

On our second day in India we went straight to the Delhi train station to buy tickets.  It was the most intense and overwhelming place out of all India in my opinion. We got there at the dead heat of the afternoon and there were hundreds and hundreds of men everywhere.  Right when we showed up we were surrounded by at least 40 men all trying to 'help' us or in other words scam us.  Nothing was legible and we were told at least 20 different stories of how to buy tickets, and when we would follow one man another would come up and say, ''he's lying, he's lying!" so we would leave him and go with a different man and after an hour of confusion we realized we couldn't trust anyone. So we felt stranded and hopeless.  We were brought to another train ticket booth and spent another hour there and went through the exact same thing and after 3 hours we gave up and found ourselves at a travel agency.  It gives me a head ache just thinking about it all again.

It made us feel better when we walked into the travel agency to find 3-4 other groups that all went through the exact same thing as us.

 Our plan was to buy train tickets to go up north but little did we know that you have to book them at least 2 weeks in advance!  Landon had traveled through South East Asia and said that he could buy a ticket and hop onto the train the same day, but with 1.21 billion people in India… that's not possible, ever.  So after the tiring train station we were vulnerable and ended up hiring a driver for 2 weeks to drive us through Rajastan, the desert of India.  There were pros and cons to it looking back, but it all added to the indian experience.  

So this is my On the Road series.  It was my first time on the highway and I was literally taking pictures the entire 6 hours because everything was so new and intriguing to me.  One of my favorite things about the Indian people is how expressive and decorative they are, with everything and anything they do, wear, or drive in that matter!  Even if it was falling apart with dirt caked all over, they had hand-painted rims, metal flowers along the sides and every color of the rainbow. Here's just a little taste of it all.