India

Here it is, my steaming account of two weeks in India. Read it with a grain of turmeric-salt, for it is but a steaming pile of notes finally compiled from the lip of a dark pit of despair I’ve been crawling out of for two weeks. I feel as sharp as a plastic spoon.

I think i must have manifested my fate. Researching “how not to get sick in India” pre-departure, I read some tips at hippie-inheels.com: “If you see a dirty old knife and a cutting board covered in mold, don’t eat there.” Check. Then at chasingtheunexpected.com: “You can take showers in India, but you should wash your genitals with bottled mineral water.” Got it.

So here I am in Udaipur, famously the most romantic city in India, poisoned by some experimental vegetable pancake concoction two guys in a hip restaurant cook up when I ask if they have dosas. They are young, beer makers, and we talk about things like Franziskaner and cascade hops, that’s why I’m surprised this is where it happens. And so begins my downward spiral.

Travel Diary, Day 4. My throat is scratchy and in searing pain. I must be the oldest person in this hostel by 8 years, other than the English guy who everyone hates because he’s mysogynystic and spilled an ashtray all over the place and refused to clean it up and then bragged about the non-fat Indian prostitute he had lined up for later. What am I doing here? What am I doing in life?

One strange night I’m running around Mumbai with a Chinese guy from Malaysia and a Turkish guy from Germany, each more of a character than the other. Deep in our search for the reputed Thieves Bazaar, so named because it once sold stolen goods but now might offer touristy knick-knacks, we ask locals for directions. A few blank stares then a few fingers pointing down that way and to the left, and we go. Guys, this must be it, I say, seeing a very narrow alleyway with some Christmas lights framing the entrance. We are soon surrounded by men covered in soot, working in tiny shacks cutting pipes and using blowtorches. This isn’t the Thieves Market after all, just a heavy industrial pocket of what appears to be the Islamic part of town, and it is decidedly not friendly. One man walks up to me and just stares in my eyes with an absolutely menacing look; it feels openly hostile. Soon, prostitute after prostitute is grabbing my arm, pulling on my sleeves, as we squirm down the crusty street with the choked sidewalk that crumbles, disintegrates, bleeds into the steaming street. At one point our Turkish friend stops and yells, Listen, guys, there’s no market or shmarket, this is not the place for us, let’s go to the cinema! So we go to the mall and watch the remake of Jumanji, starring The Rock.

Six days into my trip and I may be suffering from any combination of the following: salmonella, ntamoeba, dysentery, giardia, campylobacter, shigella, e coli, listeria, norovirus, pneomonia, the common cold. Additional are the hacking cough and the jet lag still with me Barcelona. And in true comedic fashion, the not-so-subtle gastrointestinal effects of food poisoning set in right before my eight-hour journey from Udaipur to Pushkar, seven of those in a crumbling bus on ribbed roads and the final hour in the world’s shittiest auto-rickshaw.

At least the scenery is great. Attractive young families sitting on side of highway doing who knows what. A tanker that says Milk Not For Sale on the back. Thousands of cows, sheep, exotic birds. Technicolor ponds, seas, lakes and oceans of decaying garbage. A truck transporting a cube of marble the size of a VW Westfalia. Shrines surrounded by eucalyptus trees and weird succulents. Pregnant dogs by the dozen. Young boys hugging and wrestling in the middle of the street, ten feet from stands vending pomegranates. Men huddled in packs while women in outlandishly bright clothes gather firewood from rock-strewn fields as they have for thousands of years; even their facial expressions seem like a time warp.

I’m happy Pushkar has been relatively quiet so far, because there’s one thing making me feel like I’m to be spit out of India’s mouth like a gnarled piece of gristle or a stale chili from an otherwise delicious daal: the honking.

It’s a famous phenomenon in this country. Driving consists of accelerating, steering and making constant, unapologetic use of the horn. Making a turn? Honk. See a pedestrian ahead? Honk more. Wish you were moving faster? Honk even harder. Encounter an obstacle in the road, be it another car or even a cow? Honk until it’s no longer in your way. Want to beat a stretch of traffic by driving down the wrong side of the road? Hold down the horn for the duration of the block. You know, just because, that’s how it’s done. Every time I take a 30 minute ride through this horn-cum-exhaust inferno I feel like I need to run into a hovel, curl into a ball in the corner, and start crying like a baby.

Travel Diary, Day Six: So here I’m am in Pushkar, where I spend three hours a day trolling around like a sloth amidst the otherworldly scenery, the other 21 hours spent lying in bed in my hostel on the fringes of town, stewing in seemingly three or four strains of the flu. The flu germs are having a wild orgy inside me, drenched in crusty goat blood and dirty insulin. They’re wearing heavy boots, stomping around on broken glass with little to no rhythm, listening to Nickleback and Dave Matthews on repeat, eating nothing but stale twinkies with cream that comes from underaged boys. My lungs feel like they’ve been rubbed with fine fiberglass particles. And meanwhile, outside the hostel window are pigeons copulating. That may sound like a potentially romantic soundtrack but it isn’t.

I’ve penned pages and pages of such poisonous prose! That’s what goes through your head when you’re deathly ill for days. Bitter resentment turned into literary acid. I won’t share any more or it.

Pushkar is interesting: it’s the holiest city in Rajasthan, a mix of earnest religious authenticity and banana pancake travel at its worst. Tie dye clothes for sale from barking hawkers while unscrupulous thieves prey on you from every conceivable angle, the falafel joints blaring trance music at ludicrous volumes the whole while. Luckily the lake in the center of town is a different story, a jaw-dropping cauldron of thick holiness, ringed by majestic steps and 1,000 crumbling temples. Sitting there at sunset, I watch people ceremoniously bathe in the lake as tabla drummers spin a mesmerizing auditory web that echoes marvelously into another dimension. The air is thick, cows everywhere, thousands of pigeons crowning the scene. Atmosphere is what I seek when I travel, and this is the most delicious atmosphere I have ever seen.

I eat a triumphant breakfast after a night of sweating a gallon of toxic waste into the poor bed. Food so pretty you’d never see it back home: pink strawberry porridge topped with pomegranate seeds and little silver orbs. I eat while pondering the copy of Mein Kampf on the shelf. To further the weirdness quotient, at one point the restaurant owner stands by my table and watches me eat, utterly deadpan. (It reminds of me of this Indian restaurant I used to frequent in San Francisco before it shut down; the owner would often walk up, grab your spoon, and dramatically say “with your permission” before hand-feeding you your own food. I had friends freak out about it, but I always found it surreally delightful.) I walk outside of the building to blow my nose without causing disturbance. When I return, the woman at the next table stays seated and blows her nose with cartoon-like volume and intensity. I bid the restaurant namáste, and I head to Jaipur.

My auto rickshaw driver pulls over and gets out with no explanation. Two other men hop into his place and we continue driving.

At the busy train station, people stare at me without so much as a nod, wink, smile, or facial expression; they just stare. A pigeon walks along the train tracks and will be able to fly away when a train comes. Three feet behind the pigeon is a large pig.

There won’t be much scenery, I am warned about the train ride. On the contrary, I am loving this moving cinema of eye candy. Dilapidated shanty towns edging the trains tracks and dried up reservoirs and abandoned public works projects, all encrusted in a festive potpourri of robust weeds, brittle junk food wrappers and magnificent lone trees adjacent bright clotheslines next to ancient fields baking in the India sun. I listen to the Cornershop album “When I Was Born for the 7th Time” while gazing out the window from behind lazy eyelids. It’s all like pop rocks for my brain.

I spend my last few days in Jaipur, a city somehow more cacophonous and more relaxed than anyplace I’ve been to in India. The scams are more heavy-handed and viscous, while passersby have been alarmingly sweet and charming. When I see a cute Indian on the side of a quiet road, with an ironing board, ironing a series of shirts, I can’t help but half smile to myself. I’d smile fully but my lips are so chapped it hurts.

My next auto-rickshaw ride is so honk-heavy I need to wear earplugs. Climbing on board to share the journey with me are a woman around my age with a young son and daughter. For the next 30 minutes they take turns looking at me. I’m travel weary enough that I relish the comfort of sinking behind the sunglasses I’m wearing. I wonder, what are they staring at, and why does it bother me? Do I feel like a victim? On the other hand, after the shit I’ve been through in this country, can’t I just here here anonymously and not worry about it? I can, but it’s still not in line with my interpersonal values. As the three get off at their stop, I take off my glasses. I look at the boy and give him a peace sign; he lights up. I give the girl the biggest smile I can muster; she is elated. Their mother finishes paying the driver and bids me a graceful namasté.

My following rickshaw ride is the weirdest yet. The driver lunges up to about 10 mikes per hour then back down to 5, ten, five, ten, five, an acceleration rhythm that will continue uninterrupted for the next 40 minutes. At one point he stares down at one of the tires, in the meantime smashing into a parked car. He backs up, sees a massive dent in the parked car’s bumper, then continues bumbling along, ten miles per hour, five miles per hour, ten miles, five.

Bumbling like that rickshaw driver, my impression of India sputters like a dirty exhaust pipe. I’m weak, broken, coughing, wondering why anyone would have a single word of praise about this beguiling slice of dystopia. The antagonistic people, the caustic food, the omnipresent filth, the noise, the pushing, the yelling. Along with my mounting troubles finding a plane ticket back home, the theme of this supposed vacation has become Escape From India If You Can, and I imagine it will eventually conclude bitterly with a “please DO let the door hit you on the way out. Hard.”

Alas everything was filtered through my lens of being really sick and never able to break out of 5-10mph purgatory. Eventually the veil lifts - at least in time for me to have one single marvelous day, finally relishing this land’s incendiary cuisine, heart-warming characters and unapologetic joie de vivre. And this final day falls on a national holiday: Kite Day, when the entirety of Jaipur is awash in paper kites, dazzling the sunny sky with exuberant movement and majestic color. Tens of thousands of kites, all set to hundreds of bleeding soundtracks of music blaring from windows all way too loud, of course.

Damned be my weakened vessel! I am going to climb up the side of this gorgeous mountain with four friends from the hostel! We will climb up to the holy palace at the peak, where will dazzle onlookers with headstands and clumsy but spirited acrobatics! We are a group of boys doing cool shit with our bodies as delighted Hindu families watch us. At one point I realize I am teaching acro yoga poses to the two friends who are natives of India, the birthplace of yoga. It’s now sunset, and all of Jaipur is set ablaze by a sea of fireworks coming from the streets. These subside and make way for thousands of fire-fed lanterns floating up towards heaven in the balmy night. I buy some chickpea cookies. A friend from Kazakhstan says they have these back there; I tell him I grew up with them too because they’re popular in Persian culture.  

Eventually we journey back to the hostel all crammed in an auto rickshaw, me and the driver up front stuffed into a compartment designed for a 12 year old Chinese contortionist, the other guys in the back, on the road next to two nine-year-old boys joyriding on a motorcycle. Someone in the back says that whenever he looks out the back of an auto rickshaw, it’s bittersweet because it’s like the credits rolling at the end of a movie. I knew India would send me off with a kiss.

In the end, India actually sends me off with a kiss and a high five, as I have one final adventure. My bus rumbles down a 16-lane highway through the middle of Delhi. I’m on my way to the airport where my long awaited return home will commence. The bus driver slams on the brakes when our exit is suddenly closed for unforeseen reasons, plunging us into a thick traffic jam that will render me fucked. Luckily I’ve been chatting with Sundeep, the guy sitting next to me, some sort of military operations lawyer. He tells me he will get me to the airport on time, and the mission begins. We jump off the bus on the side of the freeway. He immediately flags down an auto rickshaw and gets it to turn around so we can go backwards on the freeway and squeeze us through to where we’re going, of course. Seconds later we turn around again because Sundeep left his jacket on the bus. We are screaming in between busses and big rigs and we finally catch up with our former bus. Sundeep jumps out and onto the bus, grabs his jacket, and hops back into the rickshaw. Squeeze through there! Faster! He’s guiding the rickshaw driver to excellence as we all cackle like children, and we eventually maneuver to my destination in ways I never would have dreamed possible. Sundeep bids me farewell and I lug my backpack the final stretch towards the redwood gates that will welcome me home.

Saigon? Mexico City? Phenom Penh? Comparing India to extreme places I’ve been in the past, the only appropriate parallel I can draw is Burning Man: an utterly unapologetic, unfiltered, no-holds-barred expression of life that will leave you in the dust without batting an eyelash. You need to be ready, or you can show up thinking you’re ready, or maybe you’ll never be ready. My first Burning Man, I was motionless, stunned and slack-jawed before fully getting into it my second year and beyond. But who knows if I’ll return to India ever again.

Why do I travel, leaving a massive footprint on the world then penny pinching my way around struggling communities?

Why do I write about it, sharing my neurotic mental static with innocent bystanders?

What can I say about viewing in vivid detail the juxtaposition of wealth and squalor, privilege and helplessness?

I’m simultaneously embarrassed and grateful to have no answer.