East Glendalough School

My Trip Around the World
by Robert Lee

I left Dublin, with my family on St. Steven's Day 2009 and arrived in Delhi (India) the next day. The thing that struck me was the colour of everything. I'd seen pictures of India before and had assumed they were just faded, but everything in the city is actually brown like an old photo. Then when we got out of the airport all you could look at was the amount of people and litter. There are 1.3 billion people in India and they are everywhere, on the side of the road, crammed in and on top of buses. It was all a lot to take in and any pictures or descriptions can't do justice to the craziness of this country. You have to be there to hear the clammer, smell the smells and be constantly hassled by taxi drivers and beggers!

We were only in Delhi for a day and a night but what we saw of it was pretty shocking. It was huge and so polluted we couldn't see the sky. There were people getting haircuts on the side of the road, cows in the middle of the round, people literally dying on the streets, crazy traffic and loads of begging childen. We were all in shock when we left Delhi to fly to Chennai in the south of India.

We were staying in a Leprosy Mission hospital where my Mum worked 30 years ago. It was 3 hours drive from Chennai. We had tours of the hospital which didn't have glass in most of the windows and had corridors and wards opening out onto gardens. It was fairly grim looking but by this stage we were used to India and all its bizarreness and were beginning to see past the poverty and general filth. We were in the countryside now and the colours here were much brighter - green paddy fields, colourful saris, brightly painted lorries and some very brightly painted houses.

By the time we got the next hospital. India had grown on me a lot. There were monkeys everywhere and going for rides in rickshaws was great crack just because it was so dangerous. We joined a team from Ireland to build houses for leprosy patients who had been cured. We were there to help lower stigma because everyone is so scared of catching leprosy they won't let anyone who has had it back into the village. (Some are beaten by their own family and left on rubbish tips to die). If the villagers see westerners building houses for them then the patient is allowed back in the village. Westeners are idolised and in the villages you are treated like a celebrity and have to shake all the kids hands.

I really enjoyed India and though we nearly died a few times I would love to go back!

On the way to new Zealand we stopped of in Singapore which is the opposite of India in every way. There is no litter, the electricity stays on for more then 5 minutes at a time, the place is full of sky scrapers and everyone has a load of money and all the shops are designer. It's one of the safest cities in the world because its so strict, for example if you are caught with drugs you're put to death and its illegal to chew gum so it dosn't get stuck to the pavement.

New Zealand is a lovely country. It has the same climate as Ireland but has whopper big mountains and clear blue lakes. We stayed in Queenstown on the South Island and went bungy jumping which is fantastic and I strongly recommend it! We drove up to the North Island, kayaking and climbing the odd volcano on the way! We ended up in Auckland which is the biggest city in New Zealand but not the capital. It is a nice city with the same population as Dublin but more spread out and with big, new skyscrapers.

On the way home we stopped in LA and stayed on the Queen Mary which was the fastest ocean liner in the '30's and is similar to the Titanic. All the cabins were as they were in the '30's and you could go down to the engine rooms and up to the bridge. There was a Russia submarine beside it which was deadly. I was well impressed! We didn't see much of LA 'cause its so ridiculously huge (like everything else in America) and because there was so much to do on the ship but what we did see was pretty cool. There were more sky scrapers (Ireland really missed out on skyscrapers) and a whole load of palm trees and pelicans.

I don't mean to offend any teachers but I learnt so much more travelling around the world then I ever could have learnt in a month at school!