There may be something to Muslim poverty in India. When the British left in 1947 the country broke down into massacres between the two religions. The country then split apart into East and West Pakistan with India in the center and Muslims were relocated into East and West leaving most of India to Hindus except for a few Muslim enclaves (like Ajmer). The 1971 War saw East Pakistan liberated and it became Bangladesh. India and Bangladesh had a ban on land border crossings until 2006. When I crossed the border both times it was by air.
Anyway.....the utter poverty, the many crippled children I saw about, the open sewers, the starving "holy" cows.....one thing you won't see in India are coins laying on the ground! I didn't see the first penny in 8 weeks.
Some things the very wealthy just couldn't get....like window screens. Very strange. I slept one night without a bed net and I counted 40 bites the next day. I never scratched the first one and a couple of those bites scarred. :dropjaw: I may have come down with a slight case of dengue fever the first week. Later, I rather wished I had gotten the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine also (I have it now).
In India, no matter were you go, you will see people. Even in the rather barren wastes of the west, where there is nothing, you see people.
My malarial pills were prescription only, "Larium" is the trade name. I doubt I could have found replacements while there but you were there longer albeit 11 years later.
There was no apparent security at the Taj in 1997. I just wish we had more time to see the building, it has been the only man-made thing to "move me" on a spiritural level.
There are mosques on either side and we tried to walk over to one BUT the red bricks were so hot those burned our feet and we had to run back to the cool white stones of the Taj.
I read the Bible nearly every day while I was there and I had a life-altering religious experience while in the Durga in Ajmer. All I can say is I reached a state of prayer meditation that the Holy Spirit came over me unlike anything before or since. What It said to me I wrote into my diary and that sentence both answered one of the questions I had going to India and provided an inspiration and comfort until I die and face Judgment. It was that powerful and wonderful. :)
I had just finished a course in Microbiology before deciding to go, so I was particularly concerned about disease prevention. Were you so concerned?
I kept a daily diary of the trip, did you do anything similar?