India Day 4 (March 8, 2009)

Today was our last day in Delhi, and for the first part of the day we did a morning city orientation of Delhi, seeing numerous government buildings and historical sites. The main attraction of the day was the Red Fort Complex, a monument which has been inscribed as a World Heritage Monument, for the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage. It was built by the emperor Shah Jahan as his royal residence back in 1648 AD. It was huge, but like any other historical monument we had seen, it is hard to match it up with the Taj. It was still very interesting to see these monuments though, don’t get me wrong – India has a seemingly endless history. The flight back to Chennai went well, but we got back late. I met up with Spencer and Chandler again that night (they had just gotten back from their Taj trip as well), and we decided to take a little risk and walk the streets of Chennai at night. Nothing went wrong by any means but we did see some pretty eye-opening sights. We saw numerous people just sleeping on the beach and on the side of the roads as well. They even have charter buses, which I believe are sent by the government, parked on the beach at night, which offer the homeless a place to stay at night. I have never seen so many homeless people in my life – I can’t even put it into words. As we took our rickshaw back to the port, I looked to my left and saw a dirt lot filled with literally hundreds of people sleeping on the ground. Some of these people don’t even have shacks to sleep underneath…only the ground. They seriously live, work, and sleep in the same spot, with no structure…just…there…on the beach, streets, or ground. These sights will always be in the back of my mind.