Category: Travel and Tourism
Hi all,
I'm giving some searious thought to doing a technology internship in India. What sort of obsticals might I face? Some things to note:
I will be given some support from the UK company that organizes the internships but I'm assuming that I'm going to be their first blind customer.
There will be other sighted interns around my age who would hopefully help if I was really stuck but I want to avoid relying on them.
Accommodation will be provided for me.
I will be traveling using a cain; I don't own a dog.
I consider myself pretty independant when it comes to traveling - I can get myself anyware in the UK without a problem but I've never been abroad on my own before.
I'm hoping to hear from someone who is living / who has lived in India that can tell me what's what so to speak, but I'd be greatful to hear from anyone who has any thoughts on this. If I do it it will be a fairly large investment on my part, so I want to make sure that I'm really going to benefit from it. I surpose my main concern is getting lost in a place where I can't speak the native language and not having any way of finding help.
Cheers.
wow, I think it's awesome that you're considering this!! Seriously that's really neat.
However, I haven't heard many good things about India. And, I want to note, make clear in fact, that I have never been there and that what I'm about to type here are things that people, living in India have told me.
They live in a city though I can't remember the name of it. This person, who is a guy that is sighted told me that it is disgusting there. Cows are everywhere in the streets, and the smell is very horrible because there is cow mess everywhere and not much, if anything, is done to clean it up. Ad to that there are busses and people crowding the streets that he says are very narrow and hard to move around.
Again, this is stuff that someone living in that place told me I do not have any first hand experience.
They also said that they do not treat people with disabilities well at all. A lot of them there families don't want to care for them so they go in to homes and such. Also, the people there are ither very rich or very poor. There is no in between due to the cast system that is in place (although, I've heard that they're slowly trying to get rid of it...) but don't know how true that is.
I really hope my post hasn't afended anyone! That is not my intent at all. I know if someone was saying this stuff about my homeland I wouldn't like it.
Just be careful and stay safe!
Thanks for your comments. I'm still looking into this; just trying to find out if we're considdered to be descendents of the devil or something before I go.
I would make sure that if things don't work out well, you can get out easy and fast. I would do it if you can
Yeah, do you have any other countries to choose from?
I can't say much from the perspective as someone that lives in India, but I did do a freelancing job that had me travelling to Mumbai for a week. One thing I actually didn't run into at all was the assumption that I was inferior due to disability (if anything, the fact that I was from the more opulent West seemed to take precedence, insofar as I even had children come up to the car that my employer provided me and ask if I wanted to spend a couple rupees on chocolates, whereas in the west, I've had homeless people walk away in mid-beg (mixed blessing, that)).
Personally, one regret that I had was that I didn't have time to do much exploring of the city without the aid of a car service, mostly because I was jet lagged all to hell and, by the time I was on a schedule that was aligned with Mumbai, it was time for me to head back west. As far as English, I never ran into that many issues finding folks that could speak it, but again, I didn't have a lot of interaction with the rank and file. Speaking from my experience, though? I'd jump at the chance to do a few months' stint in India and, were I still full time at Microsoft, I'd be investigating a program that they have where they have you work in their ... I wanna say their Hyderabad office for either three or six months (of course, this program also comes with an apartment, a cleaning service, and a car service). But then, I also went across the border to Tijuana during CSUN 2012 just because Tijuana was there and I hadn't been.