I went to Maharashtra, India for a few months last year. It was quite an impactful experience. I like to think that I have learnt a lot from it. The beauty of India was breathtaking, yet there was always something dark lurking in the shadows. The village that i lived close to was filled with families who lived in humble dwellings and a very bright and colorful temple. When I visited the village, all of the children ran up and touched my skin, because to them I was so out of the  ordinary. I was not offended, however, but rather flattered. They were showing interest and they liked me. I was doing a homestay. After this first encounter I was to stay at the homes of one of these families. 

      Everything was very clean. The floors were mud and so were the walls. The host family was generous enough to give me their bed and they slept on the floor. There were six cattle on the other side of the house in the room in which we slept. The food for dinner that night was exquisite. It was naan. It is difficult to explain the texture and there is nothing like it except in that part of India that I know of. We dipped it in this amazing red sauce and what seemed to be yogurt sauce. The red sauce was very spicy and the white sauce helped to balance it out. 

      The religion was very different in India than the religion that I practice. Once a guide of mine practically forced me to observe in a ritual that the Indian men and women were performing and then to partake in it. It was a very interesting ritual although I am still not sure exactly what it symbolized. The men were holding flower petals that were a dark orange or deep red color, kneeling in front of a statue, and praying. It was interesting to observe. I remember being forced to pray with them as a form of tolerance. Although I felt that I understood their religion, it was so uncomfortable for me that I faked the prayer and prayed instead to the God who I believed in. It was quite an experience.

     During my trip to India, I was with an organization that highly encouraged equality and human rights. As part of this I participated in a women's gardening organization. It was a transformational experience. I remember the first few days before I had met with a few of the young children in the village. We had all sat in a circle and played games. It was beautiful because we could not speak their language and they could not speak ours; yet we could still communicate. After this I helped the women quite a bit and spent some time with others who were in the organization.

Women, I felt, were very oppressed. They seemed to only be there to cook and clean, which I feel is extremely unfair, especially if the men take for granted that their wives will do such things all of the time. I also had difficulty accepting that most marriages were arranged in India. Even within the community that I was in, I often felt pressured to behave in a more promiscuous way because I was American. At least, that is what I thought the reason was. In the women's initiative mentioned above, I heard from the leader of the organization that one woman committed suicide because of her situation. She had about three children and was basically raising them by herself. Her husband was very inconsiderate. I was upset by this news and the injustice that women were faced with in India. This being said, India was extreme in every sense of the word, both with negative and positive connotations. I enjoyed it immensely, was most often very annoyed at the oppression of women, thoroughly stressed out, and having an amazing time seeing a completely different culture in a completely different part of the world.

I also went to a very special place in Maharashtra and saw the ancient Hindu and Buddhist paintings and statues. Sometimes I felt a bit jarred, as if a statue was staring into me. This was because they looked so real. Some, I felt, were just very startling. 

I had a wonderful experience in India and learned a lot about a certain amount of a very  different culture. However, after that great adventure, I am relieved and very grateful to be home in my small and quiet country farm in the United States of America.