By Mauricio Vallarta Peña

Visiting India has been an experience. An enjoyable experience. 

Before coming I didn’t have any expectations of what it would be like, and I also didn’t want to have many expectations. From the moment we stepped foot in Delhi and started to see the streets, the people, the highways, and everything that surrounds us, I’ve seen many differences from the U.S., but from Mexico (where I’m from), I found a lot of similarities. From how the pollution affects everyone, and some of the green projects that they are making to keep the cities cleaner. Looking at it in that way makes me think that the progress of third world countries looks alike, and it also makes me think in a way that these countries are trying to copy the “American model.” Big highways, a lot of cars, the use of many resources, and unrealistic expectations for the future. 

In Delhi, even the airport is surprising—how fast and big everything is and looks. Then as you travel no more than 10 minutes in the bus on the highway you find modern commercial buildings and luxurious residential areas, like if it was all inside an elite compound. After a few more minutes you finally get out of the airport’s highway and start to experience what the real city actually looks like and the state of living of Delhi’s people (because it is not the same all over India). 

New Delhi is a strange place to be and a strange place to understand. It’s one of the largest and most populated cities in the world and having modern commercial buildings with the western style of a “shopping mall” with stores like Zara and Adidas selling their products at even higher prices than in the U.S. It also has beautiful buildings from when the Muslims had control over India that are older than Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of America. Of course, an old city with a lot of history that not even in a month someone could start to understand it. 

Our next stop was Mussoorie, a vacation city made by the British in the year 1820, built on the steep banks of the foothills of the Himalayas to keep the families of the British away from the heat of the plains of India. Beautiful in its natural aspect of the mountains, and without pollution you are able to see the highest Himalayas from there. I did not expect the amount of people who live there and how big the city looked from the highest point. Very different from what we all thought, since we thought it was a calm city with almost no people. Getting to Mussoorie also made me notice how the whole country is changing and how we can bypass big parts of cities through the “flyways” that go on top of what in Latin America are known as favelas, that are kilometers and kilometers of houses and buildings being built without a proper method or plan. In the same flyways we find new enormous residential buildings copying the “Chinese style” representing “progress” that are being built as a bet for the growing middle class. Passing through made me see a lot of wildlife, agriculture, and cities that have particularities in religion, or that have grown over 20 million in population in the last 20 years. It’s amazing to look at all of that as an opportunity and a way for more sustainable development. One can see how resources are being used poorly and how the education and introduction to new ideas or technology can make a different path for progress and what they know, or what they have been introduced to. 

Still, there is much more to talk about from India, and just one blog post is not enough for it. Politics, religion, culture, food, people, places, progress…. More to come.