So I’m picking up writing after a long break. The past few weeks have held for me many decicions and decision-revisions, many journeys over long distances, and mostly a lot of zoning out from the rest of the world. I have told myself in the past, or convinced myself really, that travel for me must be a space for learning and integration. I’ve always bawked at the idea of making quick stops in a chain of “hot spot” destinations in order to fulfill the ideal backpacking experience, and it’s not that I don’t like movig around… I do. I love seeing beautiful places and meeting people, and challenging myself. I guess I just felt in the past that that wasn’t enough of a reason to burn many tons of carbon fuel and drop many hundreds or thousands of dollars – the “memories of a lifetime” just weren’t worth it. Or maybe it’s that I thought the memories were largely fabricated anyway…
And now here I am, and looking back I find that I have successfully done all those things that I was determined to avoid (perhaps for no real reason) with incredible ease. I have hopped from place to place, often spending no more than a few days in a city. I have made on-the-spot decisons to purchase domestic plane tickets when taking the train would have been much more economical and environmentally friendly, if not nearly as convenient. I have allowed myself to fall into a bit of a traveler’s trance… where emails sit in my inbox for days and the only real necessities at any given moment are finding a reasonably-priced pineapple milkshake and some good company with whom to while away the day. Like all my other experiences in India so far, I have found that the most honest and meaningful thing to do is just to let yourself be. And so I have. And though I have mixed feelings about the experience, I feel that I’ve been honest with myself… and perhaps I have a little bit of a better sense of my capabilities and my limitations. At the very least, all the sitting around in a tropical climate has left me with a great tan 
.
Now despite the fact that I’ve been largely ignoring my connection to the rest of the world, I did try to write a blog post over the past few weeks. Though the effort was largely futile, I thankfully have at least a few of my thoughts documented, and I’ll try and piece it all together as best I can.
This installation will come in three parts:
Part 1 – Delhi and Bangalore
Part 2 – Varkala and the end of the Aussies
Part 3 – Cochin
So here she is – the first installation:
Delhi and Bangalore
[from an attempted blog post at the end of January]
Bangalore is, in most visible ways, a western city. Or at least that’s how we felt when we stepped out of the airport into a well-manicured car pick-up area and hopped into an air conditioned taxi. We drove into the city along a freeway lined with modern billboards, corporate buildings and Levi’s stores. As we got closer and closer to my uncle’s place, I was reminded strongly of summer days driving through Toronto’s Forest Hill streets. The roads were lined with beautiful, old trees and the traffic had a slow, sleepy pace to it. And it wasn’t just the well-kept streets that seemed out of place in India… we noticed a shocking absence elsewhere as well. Where had all the beggars gone? I’m sure they were hiding out somwhere in Bangalore, but their hiding spot was well-kept by someone (the city, the government, the IT companies??) because we didn’t see a single beggar during our stay.
We had just arrived from Delhi and this was all a bit of a shock. Kind of reverse culture shock, if you will. Delhi is an intense and overwhelming city – the geographical space is expansive, the streest are noisy and crowded at rush hour, and the energy is chaotic. Anita, Joel and I had a hard time adjusting to the bustle and the mayhem. After a relaxing week in the countryside in Purkal, we found ourselves again bombarded on all sides by people offering goods and services of all flavours despite our desperate attempts to communicate “no”. To be fair, we did opt to venture into one of the busiest markets in the city (we thought it would be good fun!), and we ignorantly wandered straight into the Muslim area of the market, which was apparently not the place to be. We had been warned of extreme anti-westerner sentiments floating around in that area, and as we made our way timidly through the marketplace filled with black head scarves, we could tangibly feel (whether in reality or in our own heads) the hostility. This was a new experience to add to our archives… usually we were gawked at by the locals, but there was always a smile to go with the stare. Here, no-one was dropping a even a hint of hospitality. Apparently the relationship between the west (specifically the USA) and the Muslims of the world has had a strong impact in India as well… however removed it felt to us. Sufficed to say, we were a bit overwhelmed.
On that particular day, and in the particular head space that we were all in, Delhi was for us a world of chaos. Add to this day of chaos some solid dehydration and one manipulating rickshaw driver for good measure, and you have, ladies and gentlemen, the perfect day of hell for the Aussie-Canadian bunch. Needless to say, we were ready to leave almost as soon as we got there.
Despite our feeling toward the city, our stay in Delhi was really quite a treat in other ways. Sadhana Forest, where I met Anita and Joel, was an incredibly fertile ground for friendship and a good friend, Sugeet, who we spent 3 weeks with at Sadhana Forest, graciously invited us to stay with him at his home while we were in Delhi. It was quite a relief to have a quiet space to retreat from the outside world and the company of a good friend to keep us sane (and more than entertained). I have always believed that traveling should be a space of learning, and at Sugeet’s we learned loads. We learned that jackfruit (check out this website… it’s the biggest fruit in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit) can be cooked in a delicious tomatoey curry so that its texture becomes a combination of artichoke heart and stew-beef. We learned that I’m a good marksman with an air rifle, and that Sugeet can rock a cowboy hat with style. We learned that in order to heat up a bucket of water for bathing, Indians will sometimes use an electric coil that gets lowered into the bucket on a wire and acts like an electric stove element (so cool). We also learned our limits in the city, and we learned how to make group decisions on the spot.
We knew we needed to get out of crazy Delhi, but there was the dilemma of deciding where to go. We decided on Rajastan, but at that time of the year we seemed to be faced with a never-ending waiting list for train tickets, and the buses were of no use because the distance we needed to travel was so great. Joel and Anita only had about two weeks left in India, and Rajastan was slowly becoming less and less of an option. So as a quick alternative, I posed the idea of heading to Kerala with a stopover in Bangalore, and after some glances back and forth we had all decided – Bangalore it was. Quick change of plans, quick booking of three plane tickets, quick dumping of all of our things into our backpacks, and the next morening we were off. Goodbye Delhi, hello Bangalore. And hello southern heat.
We spent about three days with Eliot, his wife Gudiya and their beautiful baby daughter Roselyn. They live in a strikingly modern apartment complex on a bustling Bangalore street, but from their living room balcony the view could be of almost anywhere… Toronto, Miami, Israel. The trees and the greenery around the compound block out the noise from the street almost entirely. We ate a wonderful meal – the first family meal in India where we all ate together at the same time, rather than with Gudiya serving us and eating on her own after we were done, as most Indian women have done in our presence during meals. It was a surprise to me how much I had missed that feeling of equality and participation during a meal. While you’re traveling you take everything in with such a hunger that you sometimes don’t allow yourself to feel homesick for the things you know. Or at least you learn to forget the homesickness over time, and then you start to accept the new thing you’re exposed to at face value and the strangeness of them disappears. When I was presented with what I’m so familiar with, but in an Indian setting, the strangeness came back – both the strangeness of traditional Indian meals AND the strangeness of an Indian meal that was so modern. So western.
Over the next few days we explored the city here, did a little shopping there, and booked our bus tickets to Trivandrum, from where we would catch a bus to Varkala and begin our last few weeks together in the south-Indian state of Kerala. Goodbye Himalayas, goodbye northern cold, goodbye city maddness, and hello beach!
Thanks go out to Sugeet and his wonderful parents and to Eliot and Gudiya for their wonderful hospitality. Come visit in Canada!
Stay tuned, dear friends, for part 2.
Much love,
Hava
