Day 8: Traveling to new regions of India

Today, Sunday, was a big travel day for Class 9 on their international experience in India.  We said goodbye to Agra and boarded the bus for a 4-hour drive to Delhi.  The drive gave us an opportunity for a class meeting and debrief of the last few days.  We did a class exercise to role-play being a South Dakota tour guide for our India tour guide, Raj, highlighting what our state of South Dakota has to offer in terms of Ag Production. We discussed livestock production including cattle, sheep, buffalo, turkey and swine. Also, grain production of wheat, soybeans and corn along with ethanol production. We of course had to highlight Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Black Hills Stock Show, Local Rodeos, 4^th of July Celebrations and Annual Pheasant Hunting. 

We drove past a number of these stacks which are brick kilns.
The constant building of new structures in India requires a lot of
red brick for all the walls and they come from small business owners
 who mix, form and fire the bricks.

As far as Class 9’s overall consensus of India to date: each of us has truly enjoyed this full immersion experience to the India culture not only of Taj Mahal but every day we have had to date.

On the bus, we took a different route than previous and travelled via the new, four-lane freeway which allowed us to make good time and the traffic was not as hectic.  The freeway crossed directly through relatively undeveloped areas, which gave us the opportunity to view the countryside of India while in transit.

When we arrived in New Delhi, where we’ll be flying from on Thursday, we stored our main luggage at the hotel and utilized only our backpacks for the next three days.   Once completed at hotel, we ate lunch at a hotel called Chore Bizzare in Old Delhi complete with old world charm.  The food they served was Kashmiri and Mughlai.  After lunch we made our way to a huge train depot in Delhi. 

Waiting on the platform 

Simple but clean and comfortable train car for the 4 hour ride to Ludhiana

We boarded a train and travelled another 4 hours northwest to the town of Ludhiana.  This was quite an experience for almost everyone in the class as very few had ever ridden on a passenger train prior to this trip.  Trains are a common and well-developed mode of transportation in India, so it was fun to ride on the rails a bit. The train only stops for 3 minutes at our destination so we had to make a quick exit and were glad that we didn’t have our big suitcases to deal with. The train was very comfortable for everyone and a nice change to the cramped modes of travel we have experienced on the buses and planes.

Tomorrow we'll explore Ludhiana with time at the Punjab Agriculture University and a tour of a flower seed production farm.  Stay tuned!

Written by Kyle Schell and Brian Bannwarth