It Feels Like This Is The End

Ahhh.

Gray, chilly Toronto. How nice it is to be home!

I have said goodbye to masala dosas and shakshouka, and have slipped back into the world of blueberry pancakes and rain. I arrived in Toronto two days earlier than expected (due to some whirlwind airport adventures), and have been trying to ride through my jet lag while at the same time adjusting to being back in a place that now seems so strange. Though it’s been three-and-a-half months, part of me feels like it’s been only a few days, and that same part of me also still has the ‘travel itch’. It keeps nudging me to not sit still… “Just work for a few weeks to make some money,” it says, “and then pack up your bag again and of you go.” I’m mulling this advice over.

And now for the promised story:

About four and a half weeks ago, I was sitting on a beach in the south of India and had a experience that pushed my patience over the edge. The experience was not as significant as the voice that popped into my head immediately afterward and stated loudly and clearly: “I think you may have had enough of India and are ready to move on. You’ve done all the growing you can do here for the time being, and you should probably go to Israel.” Now, I don’t know if any of you have had a similar experience with the voice of sense, but she and I have had to build a loving and trusting relationship with one another over the course of my travels… so when she came around and said “go to Israel,” I said: “hey, that sounds like a pretty great idea. I think I’ll do that.”

When I booked my ticket a few days later, I was confronted with an email that I had received a few weeks earlier. The email informed me that recent changes had been made to the conditions of Indian multiple-entry tourist-visas, and starting in January all tourists who decide to exit the country must then wait at least two months before re-entering. But, of course, there were also a list of detailed exceptions – namely, if you could produce evidence of existing airline tickets leaving from India that necessitated that you re-enter before the two month period, you would be exempt. So of course, I went ahead and bought my ticket to Israel, planning to fly round-trip from India and return 3 weeks later to catch the tail end of my return flight from Mumbai to Toronto. Seemed logical to me – why spend an extra thousand dollars to get a new ticket from Israel?

Well, after all was said and done, I arrived at Ben Gurion airport at 3:30am on Shabbat morning to catch my return flight to India. I walked up to the desk, presented my passport, and I found myself being denied entry to the flight. The woman who was supposed to be printing my boarding pass had a little note pop up on her screen stating that I hadn’t done my mandatory 2 months outside India before trying to return. I explained that I already had tickets purchased to return to Toronto, and I explained what I had read about the exemptions to the 2-month rule. The woman sent me upstairs to the Turkish airlines office to print the document detailing the exemptions, and after discussing the print-out with several other airport personnel for another hour or so, it became clear that I wouldn’t be making my flight.

For whatever reason, I wasn’t panicking. But maybe I should have been… after deciding that the best thing to do would be to try and re-book my Mumbai-Toronto flight as a Tel-Aviv Toronto flight, I realized that I had lost my wallet. In it were my VISA card, my debit card, and my driver’s license.

Then there was a lot of running around, a lot of phone calls to Toronto, and a lot of sitting and waiting. As fate would have it, it turns out that it is completely and utterly impossible to buy an airline ticket at an airport without a credit card or the necessary cash on your person. As I had neither with me, I had to have my father (to whom I am indebted) call into the National Continental Airlines office in Boston and have them transfer the information to the airport where I was. It was quite a production… the woman who had been helping me for the last few hours (and who was shocked at my calm attitude through the whole thing), brought me to her supervisor’s office and let me use the only phone in the airport that had long-distance calling on it. I was able to get the ticket booked, and even had the luck to find some traveler’s checks that I was able to cash to get me back to Tel-Aviv for the day. It just goes to show… you should really always be kind to the airline staff. And always, ALWAYS travel with traveler’s checks.

In the end, I arrived back in Toronto last Sunday afternoon. I have since continued my travels with a good friend as we took a week-long road trip through Boston, New York and Washington DC. And now, I am home again. And Toronto is still gray and chilly.

As I find myself re-counting my adventures to friends and family, I’m getting more and more time to process what exactly happened to me in my travels. Unfortunately, I’m watching as many of the feelings of self-understanding and much of the resolve to change my life fade into shadows of themselves, though I’m trying to hold on. It’s hard to keep up the clarity when there is so much pressure to fall back into old habits and vices. It’s so easy to do here because life is so much less of a struggle… or rather I should say that a sense of adventure is harder to stir up when the cows on the streets are nowhere to be found. But I’m finding that all it takes is a moment of focus to bring back all those resolves and intentions that I’m so thrilled and awed to have discovered on my travels. I just have to remember to focus…

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So this, I believe, marks the end of this blog. I could keep writing, but I doubt that brushing my teeth in the morning and walking to the grocery store in North York will make much of a story. So it is here that I will choose to bring things to a close.

If my being home means that we are now on the same continent, and possibly even in the same country or city, please be in touch. It would be great to see you! And for all you lovely souls that are scattered around the world, we’ll speak soon. I’m looking forward to it.

Thank you all (whoever you all are), for following along all these months. It’s been fun – both the journey itself as well as the beautiful opportunity to write for an audience that isn’t my grade 12 English teacher. Thank you for your comments, and for your kind words, and for keeping me writing! The writing has really been such a pleasure.

May enchanting adventures find you wherever you are .

With love,
Hava

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