The End of the Journey (in India)

The final day has arrived.  My departure from India, my temporary home for the last six weeks.  This experience has been something remarkable.  The “cloudy days and dark nights” that my wife prophesied in the letter she hid in my bag, came to pass.  Sometimes it was hard, and sometimes it was damn hard.  But not all the time, heck, not even most of the time.  Most of the time, I just enjoyed my experience. 

I enjoyed being conscious of things for the first time:  the song of the “kularu,” the call of the peacock, the chattering of the monkeys.  I enjoyed seeing the mountains and the desert and the plains and the coastline. I enjoyed hearing the myriad languages and seeing the print that went with them.  I enjoyed eating all the Indian foods, so many different regional differences, and eating them with my hands like the native people.  I enjoyed the train experience.  I enjoyed the tuk-tuk experience.  I enjoyed my domestic Indian flights.  I did not enjoy the bus experience :).

I enjoyed meeting all the friendly people I found along the way, and I enjoyed getting my fingers on the “pulse” of India - those things that you can’t really analyze or put into cogent sentences.  There’s a “suchness” or an “is-ness” (stealing those terms from somewhere) of India that can’t be described in print, or in the pictures and videos I shot, trying to record what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling.

This “is-ness,” this “such-ness” is what I came for, and I got it.  A full dose to be sure.

And now, it’s time to go back.

Back to Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts (that’s my current salivating obsession) and good pizza and hot showers and places without bugs.  Back to “Western” AC and comfortable mattresses and familiar words and downtime.  Back to reliable electricity, great and fast cell coverage, and haggle-less transactions.  And of course, back to my loving wife and child, who were with me every step of the way, in my heart and in my mind.  The support I have received from my family and friends and all the others that have chimed in, as comments on blog posts, in private emails, and as silent unmentioned prayers for encouragement and for protection, this support was not taken for granted.  My gracious thanks go to all who have lifted me up in whatever way they saw fit.

A mentor and friend wrote me this:

Being a kind of educational nut, I think that life is our best teacher and it is always trying to teach us something. I hope that you will take some time to ask yourself, "What have I learned?” from my travels, about myself, about the people I have met, about the life styles of others?  And "Did my trip meet or exceed my expectations?”  Most travelers can't answer these questions.  About all one can ask in most travel was “Did I see what I wanted to see or do what I wanted to do?," since most travel is just that, with almost no interaction with the people native to the country.  You did what I call the Nitty-Gritty in travel.  I would be interested also in knowing what were your greatest surprises?

His questions were meant to be answered in my own head, but as I’ve shared so much via the blog already, and you all have been my silent co-pilots, it was fitting to answer some of them here.

I agree that life is our best teacher and that it is always trying to teach us something.  Some people call it life with a small “L” and some people call it Life with a big “L.”  Some people call it God and some people call it the Universe.  Some people call it their conscience or their intuition or the still small voice, like the Quakers.  While we can debate all the intricacies of connotation and denotations, and psychology and religion and spiritual mysticism, I am sure that they all end up in the same place.  We are born to develop into our true nature.  And this Journey of mine to India was what was right and necessary in my own development.  “I hope you find everything that you’re looking for,” I got in that same letter from my wife.  “Especially the things you have yet to identify specifically, but that you know are waiting for you.”

And so, what have I learned…  I have learned that as many unique and fascinating differences as there are across peoples and cultures, there is so much the same.  We are the same people, just born into different places.  Places where haggling or not haggling is the way to do business.  Places where we guide our children tightly or guide them loosely.  Places where we call God “Jesus” or call God “Ram.”  Places where we grow up speaking English, or grow up speaking Malayalam.  But we are still doing business, we are still raising children, we are still calling God, and we’re doing it in our own tongues.

The people I have met have run the gamut from trying to take advantage of me to taking care of me like old family, even if we were literally strangers on a plane.  The lifestyles I encountered were as varied as the regions, all of them just right for the time and the place, and most importantly the people.

My trip exceeded my expectations, but to be fair, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, so technically it wasn’t hard, but practically it was.  Because though I wasn’t really conscious of it, I did have a way I thought things should go; some standard that should be met in order for the trip to be “successful.”  I wanted the “real” India.  And I got the most genuine look I can imagine.  I was a foreign transplant into that “real” India for a month and half, and I know that I am better for it.

I don’t know what my greatest surprises were.  Maybe that the trip actually came together, and I actually got here, and I actually did the “close to the ground” kind of travel I wanted to do.  I was surprised at how quickly I was able to hear that inner voice guiding me, despite how loud and chaotic this country is.  I was surprised by how social the average Indian is, and how close those social ties bind the family and wider social groups together.  I was surprised at how many people were tuning in to the blog and were sending me notes of support.

The blog itself was an exercise.  I didn’t even consider it for the longest time.  I figured I would write down my thoughts and impressions, privately.  I would, of course, take photos and video.  But all those things would be for my own recollections, my own future consumption.  Because I am not an extrovert at all, and I am certainly not public about much that I do.  I am a rather private person.  But at some point and for some reason, the needle pointed to my doing a public blog, and so I did.  I hope that it’s being publicly available helps people escape the cubicle grind for a few minutes here and there, reading about someplace exotic, thinking about their own Adventure that they (up til now) have never gotten around to having.

I am glad I did the blog though.  I’m glad for several reasons. 

The first is that the Adventure can happen, for all of us.  Just pack your sense of humor and your flexibility and you will be fine.  And you don’t have to spend a fortune.  In fact, the less you spend the more Adventure you get, lol.  My budget was $1500 total for the entire 6 weeks not including transportation to and from India.  I will arrive in the States with a little bit of money left in that account (for the next Adventure??!! :)).

The second reason I am glad I blogged (as I think I mentioned in a post), is that it helped me to slow down and actually process what I was taking in.  India is a smorgasbord of stimuli and it was helpful to use the blog to sort it all out.  Without it, many of the smaller moments would be lost to time, and their significance passed over.  The memories would probably revisit me when I was old, and I wouldn’t have known if I was remembering it or making it up. 

Third, is as a record for my own utility; if I’m ever feeling like a lack of motivation, I can remember the challenges I faced here and get the power to move through it.  Or as a humor read if I could use a laugh, because some of the things that happened were just hilarious (in hindsight of course).  Or if I’m feeling like my life is difficult, thinking back to how hard daily life really was for some of the people I met.

For posterity’s sake and the curious, I have included a map of the main destinations in India I travelled to.  The link is here, if you want to zoom.  I didn’t mark specific hotels or landmarks, just the city as it was shown on Google Maps.

I may or may not have additional posts coming after this, dealing with the “re-entry” into modern American life, and also answering frequently asked questions (FAQs).  If I do, and I’m thinking I will, it will be here on the blog, in the same place all the others have been.  Should I decide to blog on my next Adventure, whenever or wherever that may be, I will put a post here indicating as much, and include a link to it.

I respect the time and energy you have investing in reading my experiences, and I hope that somehow you’ve found something in them that you could appreciate.

I thank you one and all for coming.  I hope you have enjoyed the show.