While we were staying in India we learned a lot about the air there. If you compare the Indian air and the air in Germany, you will recognize a lot of differences, for example the air in Germany is cleaner and fresher because in India there is much more traffic and there are older cars which pollute the air.

However, there are other reasons for air pollution. There is a lot of trash in most cities and in the evening, many inhabitants make a pile of rubbish and then they set fire to it: this smells really bad and the air gets dirtier and dirtier!
In India, there are many factories, for example power stations which destroy the environment there. This includes all the trees and flowers because of the toxic exhaust fumes which the factories constantly produce.

In India, there are many animals like cows, dogs, monkeys, cats and goats which make the roads dirty with their excrements. And that also means it smells really bad. But not only the animals also the people who live in the country often use the streets and roads as their toilets. All this results in the following:

1. One could see a link to the so-called global warming
2. A second result is that many people get ill because of the bad air and the exhaust fumes. Lung diseases, headaches and cancer are just a few possible ailments.
3. The third result is - as far as the factories go - that the trees die because of the air pollution. Since the trees die they cannot change CO2 into O2 andCO2 is bad for the air and thus the people and the entire environment.

We hope, that you enjoyed reading our text about the air in India.
We also hope, that the people in India will pay more attention to their air and the environment in the future.

by Stefanie Zettelmeier, Hannah Wilhelm, Hannes Mittelberger and Desirée Dünninger

India is with over 1,1 Billions inhabitants one of the most populated countries of the world. Also it?s a really poor country with a fast growing industry. This causes an underdeveloped infrastructure and a big problem with the exploding quantity of rubbish.

So the Indians have all a missing sense of responsibility and we saw people who throw their trash out of the car window while they were driving around. One also told me to throw a used handkerchief on the ground because there was no garbage pail.

The rubbish in nearly everywhere. Not only in some of the streets like in Germany but also in the Indian houses, stores, playgrounds or at school. Also the trash is a big problem for the health of the Indian population. It attracts rats too, and there are many people who live in the street and in the middle of all the garbage.

The rubbish also makes the water dirty. So it?s not good to drink the tap water. You have to drink the water in bottles and without a garbage pail you have to throw it in the street. This causes much trash and this makes the water more dirty. So it?s a circle.

The next important thing against the trash is the hard smelling. At some places no German tourist can go through without stopping to breath. It?s hard for people that aren?t used to trash and its smelling. But the Indians are all used to it, children the same way like elderly people. When you compare Germany with India, there's a giant difference. In India, there are nearly no garbage disposals or garbage pails. In Germany this would never work. Weakly the garbage disposal comes and there are many garbage pails.

But the rubbish is also important: Many beggars have to eat the food that other people throw away. They have to hope that they will be faster than the dogs. Some children work hard on huge garbage mountains, so they will get some money to buy something to eat. Their whole childhood they breath the gases of the rubbish and get ill and die early. Some other children make toys out of  the trash. This is really exciting. What wonderful things they make out of rubbish!

Ines Boos

Actually we expected that, when we arrived in India at 3 am, nobody would be there and the streets would be silent. So we were a little bit shocked by the hundreds of people who were waiting in front of the airport. Not only the crowd in the middle of the night was strange for us, also the cars and busses which filled the streets were amazing. On our way to Trivandrum International School it seemed like half of the city was awake. It really was a relaxation to arrive at the hostel where we were welcomed by a pleasant silence. Especially in the first night, many German pupils were disturbed by the sound of the ventilators. But we got used to that after a short while.

It seemed like we were sleeping just five minutes when some of us woke up because of the muezzin's prayer. Anyway,  the rest of us was woken by the loud school bell which rang at 6.30 am.
Iin the cafeteria where we got our breakfast the atmosphere was typically Indian, too ? simply loud! That was because of the sound of the fifty fans on the ceiling, the rattle of the dinnerware and the students who talked to each other and disarranged their chairs. All these things were amplified by the echo.

After breakfast we visited the classes of our exchange partners. They were talking all the time and they did nott have to raise their hands when they wanted to answer a question. If it was that loud in a German school, the teachers would be complaining the whole day!
At lunch it was much louder in the cafeteria than it was at breakfast time because all students of the school had their lunch there.
Then we went into the city of Trivandrum. Although our school bus was a rather new one, it was terribly loud so that you could hardly understand each other. When talking about noise in India, one cannot do so without thinking of and mentioning the traffic. The loudest things in Indian streets are the horns being of cars, busses and trucks being honked more or less all the time. Indian drivers honk their horns like mad: always and in each situation!

When we got out of the bus we were surrounded by a lot of salesmen. All of them tried to make us buy their souvenirs by shouting after us, thus trying to persuade us to make a bargain. Most of us ignored them and we walked into a big store. At once it was silent.  The complete opposite of the big stores were the markets. There the real life took place. Everybody shouted and tried to debate the prices of the things they traded or wanted to buy, adults talked to friends, children cried and dogs barked.

For dinner, we went to an ordinary Indian restaurant. There the volume was like in Germany and so it was possible to have a conversation at last!
In the evening ,we had the chance to enjoy a traditional Indian dance by very famous dancers.  That was another typical characteristic of India! Everywhere you can hear sounds and Indians on their mobiles, so we were a little bit annoyed because of the terrible noise in the background.

During our journey through south India, we visited a lot of different places where we noticed different levels of volume in more or less each city. So when we went to Madurai, our guide explained that the name of the city means ?The city which never sleeps?. In the night we realized that this rendering was perfectly true.  It was difficult to sleep because the noise from the streets and inside the hotel was very loud.
We also visited a lot of temples. If you compare Indian temples with German churches there is one big difference: In Germany, there is a prayerful silence, but in India everyone is praying in a rather loud way: priests are shouting and you can also find salesmen among the temple visitors. Actually the whole life takes place in the temples. Only if there is a power blackout nearly everything goes silent and even Indians take a break. The power cuts we experienced were a great relief from the everlasting noise. So we can just hope for the Indian people to have more power blackouts!
                                        
Sometimes you can also have a little bit of  relaxation!