Sexually Harassed
May 29, 2016
Sexually Harassed
Sexual Harassment: “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” (American Association of University Women workplace definition, February 19, 2015, accessed May 29, 2016, www.huffpost.com)
I was sexually harassed while in India. Many who are reading this are probably shaking their heads and saying to themselves that this is no less than what they expected. After all, India gets a lot of negative Western press about their patriarchal society (as if ours isn’t) and reports of some high profile cases of sexual assault (the gang rape of a female student in Delhi in December 2012 comes to mind). Some people likely worried about me traveling alone as a single woman to India, fearing for my safety. Someone even gave me pepper spray to take with me in the event I got into a dangerous situation. I myself worried that, as a white woman, I might be at risk. On my previous trip to India, in 2014, I certainly got a lot more attention than a late middle-aged woman might expect.
But I wasn’t sexually harassed by any Indian men during my 5 ½ months in India. I was sexually harassed (touched inappropriately) by a white man, a fellow tour member, on the 54-day train tour around the perimeter of India with G Adventures, a Canadian-based tour company.
I am not going to describe the sordid details of my experience.
What I want to point out is my feelings of humiliation in admitting to myself my own racist attitude, having assumed that any sexual harassment I would experience would come from Indian men. And I think this is worth bringing out into the open. Fear of inappropriate behavior by Indian men probably keeps many Western women from traveling to India and experiencing this amazing country. But attitudes like this also perpetuate a “we versus them” mentality and promote a sense of cultural superiority. Men from the West are much more advanced and aware, right? Feminism, women’s rights, sexual harassment laws, etc. We got this.
But should we feel smug and superior? Let’s take a little detour and talk about sexual harassment in the United States. In 2014, the NGO, “Stop Street Harassment (SSH),” commissioned a survey of 2,000 respondents and reported that 65% of women had experienced street harassment during their lifetimes, and of that 65%, a large proportion, 23%, had been “sexually touched” (“Unsafe and Harassed in Public Spaces: A National Street Harassment Report,” www.stopstreetharassment.org, accessed May 29, 2016).
But my situation was more like sexual harassment in the workplace because I had to face the perpetrator every day after the initial harassment (and endure a second incident), much like women must face their perpetrators in an office setting. The Huffington Post reported in early 2015, in a survey of more than 2,000 women conducted by Cosmopolitan magazine, that 44% of working women between the ages of 18-34 have experienced unwanted touching and sexual advances in the office (“Survey: 1 in 3 Women Has Been Sexually Harassed at Work, According to Survey,” February 19, 2015, www.huffpost.com, accessed May 29, 2016).
I don’t know what the statistics might be in India for sexual harassment on the street or in the workplace. To me, the material point is that sexual harassment is an ongoing problem in the United States and my view that I was more at risk by Indian men than by Western white men seems ludicrous in retrospect. I don’t think there is any room for claims of Western moral superiority here.
After the incident on the G Adventures tour, I began wearing a lanyard with pepper spray, a pocket knife, and police whistle in order to protect myself. What happened when I reported the sexual harassment incident to G Adventures? Their response is instructive of perhaps the overall cultural dismissal of women’s ongoing struggle to overcome this outrage. I spent perhaps 44 out of 54 days in this situation, and the most G Adventures was willing to do, at the time I reported the incident, was to tell the perpetrator and me to avoid each other. Then a second incident occurred (in a temple where I was not able to wear my lanyard), which I reported; however, no company action resulted from it.
I am happy to say that I did not allow this experience to spoil my trip around India. However, once the train tour was over, I realized just how much stress I had been facing for 44 days, trying to avoid this guy, wearing that lanyard, and hoping worse would not happen. I wrote to G Adventures with a complaint about their handling of the situation. In the process of my communications with the company, I discovered that G Adventures does not have a published “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, unlike their competitor, Intrepid Travel (through which I took an earlier Rajasthan tour and enjoyed the overnight camel safari). Here is what G Adventures’ official response was:
- They’ll put a note in the perpetrator’s file.
- They’ll give their tour guides more power to manage the situation in the future. They’ll offer better training.
- They offered me a $250 voucher for the next trip with G Adventures (!).
- They have a “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy in the works, but it is not yet ready for publication.
That’s a fine, enlightened Western approach to the problem of sexual harassment by a company conducting tours all over the world. I cannot imagine this is the first time anything like this has happened in their 26 years of operation, and if the company had wanted to write a “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, they would have done so by now.
I have told G Adventures that until (and if) they publish their “Traveler Code of Conduct” policy, I cannot imagine traveling with the company again, and that I would be unable to endorse their company to anyone in person or on any of my social media sites. G Adventures chose to protect the rights of the perpetrator rather than a female customer with a sexual harassment complaint, and I strongly advise my readers to reconsider any tour with G Adventures anywhere in the world.
Although I did not experience sexual harassment by Indian men, I did take precautions: I wore sunglasses and never looked at any man directly while walking around in public or tourist sites; I dressed very modestly; I rarely stayed out alone late at night; and, I was always on guard, always aware of my surroundings. But how is that different than the prevailing attitude in the West, where the woman is often blamed as having “asked for it,” with her attitude, her schedule, her mode of dress, her unaccompanied wanderings?
Sexual harassment is no joke. It is a misogynist power play intended to “put women in their place.” But assuming that men of a different culture and country are more likely to perpetrate the crime is to misunderstand our own country’s (and the West’s) issues and to claim a moral superiority that’s not ours to claim.
I’m glad, strangely, that my own racism was revealed to me.
But I would be even happier if all women were respected, all the time, and everywhere.
Touched
April 5, 2016
Touched
A leper slapped me on the arm today as I walked down a French Quarter street in Pondicherry, India. A few moments before, I had left the Notre Dame des Agnes church. The leper was an old, shriveled man, shorter than I, dressed in a white robe and orange scarf, a corner of the white robe held in his teeth. He may have been a priest of some sort. He begged as I inched past him declining to contribute to his personal charity, his hand dry and whitish and missing all the fingers. Safely by him, I thought, I felt him slap me on my right arm with that very hand. I was horrified and rushed the few blocks back to my hotel to vigorously wash the shirt and my arm. At about the third washing, I recalled the man from the Bible who was told to dip in the river seven times in order to be healed from leprosy. Maybe I will need to do that, too, I thought. The irony of having just left the church did not occur to me until later.
It’s not the first time I’ve been slapped by a beggar here in India. It may have been in Kolkata when I approached an old woman crouching on a street corner holding out her hand. I had no intention of giving her anything; I was just trying to cross the street. She hit me on the leg as I walked by and shouted something at me. This was a little bit funnier than being hit by a man with leprosy. Nevertheless, all of the history of the world’s injustices were contained in these mild rebukes.
You see a lot of beggars and homeless people in India. Children, dirty from head to toe in filthy rags, will do gymnastic tricks while you wait in your tuk tuk for the light to change, then ask for money; women in sarees holding out their hands with limp babies at the breast, intoning in quiet, urgent voices, “Money. Money.” You’ll see people living on the street in makeshift tents of cloth, tin or banana leaves, with bamboo supports, their little cow dung or kindling fires heating small pots of food, the children naked as they toddle around the campsite or sleep like the dead in the heat. Many families sleeping on the train station platforms are likely homeless. One man with enormously swollen feet and legs (probably afflicted with elephantiasis) wheels himself around the Agra train station parking lot on a makeshift rolling platform, begging. I saw him first in November 2014, and two times since.
We are told that beggars are part of an Indian mafia of beggars; that you should never give to them because the money goes to the Fagin-like head boss or the drunken husband. People have reported seeing these men lurking near shops or roadsides watching their “employees” ply their trade. India has social services, you are told. You learn to go about with a certain skepticism and even disdain. “No, no, no,” you say, and shake your head, because you get tired of it, the incessant intrusion as you are trying to see the sights; all you want to do is to be left alone to see the sights. Is that too much to ask?
Of course, this is the side of India that everyone knows about. This is perhaps why Westerners may be afraid to travel to India, or any developing country, to be exposed to poverty, compared to, say, how we live at home. But I assure you that this side of the West exists, too. Go to downtown Detroit, or to the Appalachian hollers, or to a Native American reservation. But if you ask me how often I’ve come face to face with such deprivation in my lifetime in the West, I’d tell you, “Not very often,” because I don’t have to; this truth is very well hidden from view. In India, all of this is very out in the open. Not much seems to be hidden in India.
In the West, we avoid or blame others for that which makes us uncomfortable or challenges us to rethink our understanding of the world. We would rather turn away than consider evidence that might make us change our minds or even our lives. A reading on Easter Sunday at an English mass at the Catholic cathedral in Varanasi got me thinking about a different kind of person: Peter. The priest read the resurrection story from the Gospel of John (20: 1-10). In the story, the women who had followed Jesus during his ministry were planning to attend to his body now buried in the tomb. That morning they discovered Jesus’ body was gone and returned to tell the disciples about what they had seen. Peter and another disciple ran back to the tomb, and although the other disciple arrived first and knelt to look inside, Peter actually entered the tomb first. What was it about Peter that made him unafraid to investigate? What did he expect to see? Either way, a severely decomposing body or an empty tomb were surely life-changing events, events requiring a new world view. Yet Peter apparently did not flinch but flung himself into the moment, a future that would require decisions and further action. At that moment, he faced, head on, the horror of his leader’s death, of dashed dreams, and now unexpected, and even confusing, possibilities. If he had been afraid, or refused, to look into that tomb, to go inside and explore, his life may not have taken the direction it did. As it was, new dreams were born. But regardless of his response, what happened in the tomb would still have happened. In other words, difficult or unimaginable things don’t go away if you refuse to recognize them; it just means you’ll be unmoved, unchallenged, and untouched by other ways of experiencing the world. Peter ran into that tomb ready for anything.
In Kolkata, a few days before Easter Sunday in Varanasi, I visited the Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic organization founded by Mother Teresa in 1950 to serve the poor. I visited her tomb; then, I walked through the small museum dedicated to her life. It contained her few belongings: her sari, sandals, cup, crucifix. I visited the simple bare room containing her bed and desk. I learned that she felt called to be a nun and a missionary at the age of 12, and dedicated her life from then on to first teaching the poor, then eventually to caring for the sick and the destitute via the establishment of the congregation of Missionaries of Charity. She did not recoil from those suffering from any illness, including leprosy, nor did she refuse to serve those less fortunate when she had the wherewithal to do so. When faced with such an example, how does one respond? Every day of my privileged life is built on the backs of the less fortunate. It’s one thing to know this intellectually; it’s another thing entirely to be personally slapped with the knowledge.
I don’t know what it means for me in the long term to be touched in this way–to be hit by a beggar woman, to be slapped by a leper. The poor and sick in India have definitely got my attention. I’m unlikely to become the next Mother Teresa, however. But if, like Peter, I’m eager to rustle around in this unbelievable mystery we call “life,” unafraid of what I’ll find, I’ll continue to be challenged to confront my prejudices about poverty, inequality, and injustice. Maybe like Mother Teresa I’ll do something about it.
Maybe in some very small way it will make a difference.
Mother Teresa. Missionaries of Charity, Kolkata.
Listening
March 3, 2016
Listening
My left ear is blocked. A few nights ago, I woke up with a piercing earache and a sore throat. Later that day, I started antibiotics, easily purchased over the counter at the local chemist, on the recommendation of a practicing nurse on the tour. Despite this treatment, I specifically remember standing in the group conversing with someone—and feeling my ear fill with fluid. Now I have to turn my right ear toward people who are speaking to me, and I miss half of what anyone is saying in a small or large group. I’ve been spending most of my days feeling only partially present during this 54-day train odyssey. Several people on the tour have experienced this phenomenon, and they say it’s likely my ear will be blocked for several weeks before clearing on its own. I’m not particularly happy about this.
One of the tour group members is quite hard of hearing. I was a little bit impatient with him/her in the beginning, but now I’ve joined this person in the ranks of the hearing impaired. Although my hearing difficulty will probably be temporary, it has given me a new appreciation for how isolating even partial deafness can be. I have to concentrate very hard to understand, practice lip reading, and hope I can get the gist of the conversation through context and body language. I’m depending on my tour companions to accommodate me and hope for their patience and understanding. It is a tiring and humbling experience. I think it’s safe to say I’m not my usual outgoing self; I’m changed, if only for now.
But it has got me thinking about listening and working hard to understand. It seems to me that travel provides opportunities to listen in new ways, if you are willing. But you have to be willing.
Some travelers to India might be the kind of travelers who complain about toilets, accommodations, different standards of cleanliness, food and slow food service, touts, bargaining, corruption, unexpected religious and cultural practices, traditional clothing, unimaginable poverty, crazy traffic, and shocking evidence of trash and pollution. They might leave India frustrated and judgmental about their experiences. Shouldn’t India try harder to make itself into a desirable destination for tourists? You know, more like the West?
Some might visit India and stay at 5-star hotels and restaurants and travel by luxury coach or perhaps even by cruise ship. That’s a good way to avoid cultural confrontation with local people and customs.
Some tourists might laugh at everything in India, at the strangeness and apparent illogical practices. For example, five throat lozenges cost 10 rupees, but ten lozenges cost 25 rupees. This happened at not just one, but two, chemists. What happened to the Costco effect? Shouldn’t there be a discount on larger amounts, or at least parity? And, are they really worshipping an orange monkey idol? Some things just don’t make sense.
Some tourists might try to absorb Indian ways. I’m thinking of the white ladies walking around the Taj Mahal in sarees, or the hippie-type white guy in a sadhu getup in Hampi. Others come for the spas, or yoga ashrams, or to learn traditional Indian music and dance, or to experience a deeper religious awakening. Niche tourism, maybe.
Other tourists, like me, try to learn about different ways of living in this world. I find myself walking into a new situation trying to be very attentive, almost listening to the history of a place, the different types of human experience represented by the architecture, customs, clothing, language, and so on. And yet, India is a deeply complex ancient society. It has several hundred languages, hundreds of ethnic groups, many distinct cultures, countless mainstream and local religions, massive urban centers, huge rural areas, mountains, coastal regions, alluvial plains, etc. It has endured repeated invasions, conquests, Mughal rule, British colonial rule, wrenching partition, resource exploitation, and Western ignorance and disrespect, among other assaults. The vast array of diverse influences and environments is breathtaking. It is part of what makes India so fascinating and so heartbreaking.
Then, there is the propensity to want to do something about what you are seeing. A few days ago, our tour group went through a slum. About a million people live in this slum, Dharavi, outside of Mumbai. Within the boundaries of the area you will find aluminum and plastics recycling factories as well as bakeries, tanneries, and pottery-making enterprises. You will also find impossibly narrow lanes with fetid drains running along them, four toilets per hundreds of people, tiny one- or two- room homes, and highly regulated water and electric supplies (two or three hours per day). While I was shocked at what I saw, others in my group were amazed at the productivity and industriousness of those in the area. I didn’t “hear” the same things they heard. What they heard seemed like a pretty good deal for some Indians: jobs, community, food, shelter. I could only “hear” about the hovels, unsafe factories, and the exploitation of the slum dwellers by the slum tour operators. Let me tell you how to fix that, I wanted to say. Let me tell you what’s best for India. I wanted to stop listening and start talking.
One of my tour companions suggested I should stop worrying about my blocked ear; I should accept it as the new normal while on this trip. Maybe she’s right. It’s a good reminder that I need to try harder to listen to India. It is also a good reminder that no matter how much I want to listen to who India is, I can only partially hear what she is saying. I’m trying to listen, but I have to admit that I’m listening with a blocked ear. I can’t completely eliminate the influence of my cultural upbringing; I can’t completely understand the depth and breadth of history represented here and how that affects the present. I’m not from this culture, and on a certain level, no matter how much I want to understand, I’m coming into the experience with a limited ability to absorb the “sounds” I’m hearing.
Like my (hopefully temporary) hearing loss, I hope it’s changing me.
I hope it’s keeping me humble.
Dharavi slum, outside Mumbai.
On the Road to Shimla
February 13, 2016
On the Road to Shimla
The toasted cheese sandwich wasn’t very good, but it was late and this was my dinner, after a long day of travel from Dharamsala to Shimla. I sat on the edge of my bed in the hotel, calmly eating one bite after another, like any normal person would, when there was a sudden POP and an explosion and the outlet just a couple of feet from me into which the flat screen television was plugged began smoking. I ran out of the room shouting there was a fire in my room. This added to the general excitement that had been our experience since arriving at this hotel: The bellboys had checked our tour group into our ten rooms, flipped on the individual hot water bathroom boilers at the same time, and set up a few space heaters which overloaded the electrical system. There had been power outages, sparking heaters, and now this exploding outlet. The hotel was unheated, dark and dirty, the worst hotel yet in my experience in India (but there are worse, no doubt). Our guide quickly switched rooms with me. Eventually, I settled into bed in my long underwear, polar fleece pajamas, sleeping bag, and doubled up blankets…only to realize that I couldn’t turn off the last room light from my position in the bed. I’m not moving, I said to myself, and covered up my head, leaving the light on all night, falling asleep vaguely wondering if this light would increase or decrease my chances of surviving any possible fire.
It was the night of Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the 40 days of penitential practices and reflections on one’s mortality before the celebratory high holy day of Easter. As we started out from Dharamsala that morning, I had hoped we would arrive into Shimla in time for an Ash Wednesday service and the imposition of ashes on my forehead at Christ Church, a neo-Gothic structure built in 1857 to serve the British Raj at their summer capital. There was a slim chance we would arrive in time, and a slimmer chance there would be such a service, but I still hoped to participate in one of my favorite church services of the liturgical year, to observe similarities and differences in practices of Christianity in India. However, we did not arrive in Shimla until about 10:30 in the evening. Although I wasn’t able to attend a service, I had in fact been worrying about my mortality the entire day, and now there was some smoke and fire, and to me it all seemed to fit together to mark Ash Wednesday, albeit in an unexpected and non-traditional way.
That morning, after visiting the Norbulingka Institute, an organization that aims to preserve Tibetan culture, we boarded our tour bus at about 10:45, anticipating an eight-hour bus ride through the lower Himalayas to Shimla, covering a distance of about 150 miles. The bus was old, with worn-out shocks and rattling windows and uncomfortable, narrow seats. The 16 of us settled in and off we went. It was going to be a long day.
A couple of days earlier, we had ridden this bus from Amritsar to Dharamsala. I had not done well. As soon as we turned onto the mountain road that would take us up into the Himalayas, I covered my face and head with my pink scarf and dozed, repeating the meditative mantra we had learned from our guide and said every morning to bring calm and bliss before starting out on the day’s adventures: “Om Namaha Shivaya.” I don’t do well with other people driving, and I don’t do well with other people driving massive tour buses on narrow mountain roads with hairpin turns and switchbacks. I am sure I made a comical sight, wrapped up in that pink scarf, but it was an act of emotional self-preservation. When I awoke, I could not believe what I saw: The massive snowy lower Himalayas rising up like satin-clad sentinels in the afternoon sun. The awe I felt, and the fascination with the beauty before me, kept me distracted until we arrived at the Dharamsala hotel at about 4,780 feet elevation.
Two days later, on this Ash Wednesday, the narrow roads, hairpin turns, and switchbacks were going to be even more dramatic: We were heading southeast but higher into the Himalayas, to 7,234 feet. I was determined this time to enjoy the ride. The driver turned the steering wheel hard this way, then that. The bus bounced and swayed, close to the edge of the road, then close to the mountain on the other side. Vehicles passed us, horns honking; we passed slow-moving trucks and cars, our horn beeping a warning. Oncoming vehicles suddenly appeared from around the curves, swinging toward us, narrowly missing. We charged through little towns, dodging people, cows, goats, bicycles, carts, cars, and goods spilling out of small stalls. I tried to keep my focus on the stunning view. But before long, I was slumped in my seat, eyes closed, praying.
I awoke from my doze when I felt the bus stop. I looked out of the window to see a barricade and a policeman sitting next to it, preventing traffic from passing beyond that point. The driver’s helper leaned out the window and gestured and seemed to argue about our route, and we were let through. After driving a little way, we encountered a lot of parked cars along the road, and a bridge that was apparently damaged and out of commission. We would have to take a detour. The bus driver turned the bus around, and we went back to the barricade. By this time, I had my GPS out to find out where we were and where we should go next. (A GPS is a girl’s best friend in India, I’ve found.) Just beyond the barricade was our next turn to the right, but the driver pulled ahead a little too far to make the turn. There were buses coming toward us from the detour, vehicles coming from behind, vehicles in the other lane, and there was no possible option to back up even a little and make the right-hand turn. So, we went to the next intersection and turned right.
I suppose it is no accident that road trips are frequently used as metaphors for the life journey. Life, of course, is rarely a straight line from birth to death, despite the best laid plans. There are detours, roundabouts, turnabouts, wrong turns, pauses, dead stops, speeding ahead, lagging behind, lost or unreadable or no maps, surprises, mistakes, distractions, successes, disasters, good people, bad people, good choices, bad choices, excitement, boredom, and a final destination. One thing is for sure, though. In life we are all heading in the same direction: Death. We just don’t know how or when, generally. It’s unnerving enough to do just about anything to avoid thinking about it.
So, about that detour. When the driver made that right turn, he was taking a detour from the detour. And what a detoured detour it was! What had been a road immediately became a muddy gravel lane as we descended down the hill into the residential area of the town. Within a few moments, we encountered another vehicle coming the other way. And another. And another. Now began delicate negotiations between our enormous tour bus and all these cars and small trucks wanting to get past us in the narrow lane. Our tour guide and the driver’s helper leapt out of the bus to direct traffic, to little avail. One at a time, the cars inched forward and backward, got stuck, unstuck, came within less than an inch of the bus. We passengers all moved to the right side of the bus to look out the windows and watch the show. Residents came out of their houses to observe and offer their advice. We saw their lives quite close up, their patios, laundry hanging out to dry, and cows. One of the tour members leaned out the window to start a friendly conversation with a driver whose car was stuck next to us. It was a funny, surreal moment. Finally, we got past those cars, and we all broke out in cheers and applause. Little did we know just around the bend the next group of vehicles awaited us.
Quite a while later, we arrived at a two-lane road…but there were new challenges. The driver did not know exactly where to go from that point to pick up the main road to Shimla. I had the directions on the GPS. But as I passed that information along to the tour guide who passed it on to the driver, it appeared he preferred to ask directions from the locals. Perhaps the locals did know the road conditions and directions better than my GPS. But from my perspective the driver made a couple of turns that took us even further away from the direction we wanted to go. In short, this detour from the detour took about two hours.
Once back on the main highway, we were again weaving back and forth on the curved road, up and down the mountains, and I was once again dozing, a little scared and praying. We stopped for a long lunch at a roadside stand. By now it was late in the afternoon, and we had hours to go. The sun would soon set. The bus driver sat straight in his seat, turning that steering wheel to and fro for hours, changing gears higher and lower, as we made our way up to Shimla. Night driving in the mountains on a ramshackle tour bus? I tried not to think about the condition of the brakes, the possibility of the bus breaking down. Or worse. I dozed again.
Later, I opened my eyes. Now, it was dark, and the two-lane highway was crowded with hundreds of trucks, in our lane, coming toward us in the other lane, and parked on both sides of the road. Now we were passing, dodging, and weaving around them, horn beeping a warning of our intentions, the gears of the bus grinding as we chugged up and roared down the mountains. A new reason for anxiety and a new reason to go back to my uneasy rest. Would this trip ever end?
As we arrived nearer to Shimla, we traveled on a rutted stone-road bypass lined with parked trucks, and the full effect of worn-out shocks was added to the weaving, honking horn, grinding gears, and near misses. Finally, finally, after being on the road for 12 hours, we arrived at the hotel.
I wouldn’t say I feared for my life every single moment of the bus ride. But I will say that I did wonder a little bit if this would be my untimely end. The funny thing is that the bus driver was a master at handling the bus. He knew exactly what he was doing. Yes, there was room for error, and something terrible might have happened. But it wouldn’t have been because he wasn’t in full command of the bus.
And it made me think about life and how you can go through it, afraid and hiding from your fears, like I was, half awake and not fully engaged in the adventure of riding a rickety tour bus through the lower Himalayas. Too afraid to see what might be coming next around that bend rather than enjoying the view, talking with my new tour group friends, or simply marveling at the expertise of the driver on that amusement-park-like ride. Taking a chance and trusting his abilities or even feeling a calm stemming from the knowledge my end would come whenever it came, whether or not I hid from or anticipated it.
I had been fearful all day on this Ash Wednesday in India. But I have to ask myself: Is fearing mortality the same as contemplating it?
In choosing to be afraid, what had I missed on the road to Shimla?
Christ Church, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India
The Authors Lounge at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2016
January 29, 2016
The Authors Lounge at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2016
On the fifth and last day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, I stood to the side of a doorway leading into the inner sanctum of the Authors Lounge. From this vantage point, I had observed Margaret Atwood, Stephen Fry, Marlon James, Gulzar, Anil Kumble, Colin Thubron, Colm Tόibίn, Shashi Tharoor, Steve McCurry, Jerry Pinto, Irving Finkel, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, and many other literary, political, intellectual, artist, and pop culture luminaries from India and all over the world. This lounge was the hub of the Festival, now in its ninth year, the largest free literature festival in the world. Over a third of a million festivalgoers had expected, over the course of five days, to be enthralled, inspired, and challenged by the superstars who passed through these two rooms set aside for them for escape, respite, snacks, tea and coffee, and conversation with other superstars. My volunteer assignment for the festival was “author liaison,” and my job, along with my partner, Ayushi, was to escort speakers through the enthusiastic, adoring crowds to the backstage area of the main venue, the Front Lawn tent, at Diggi Palace. It had been an exhilarating, illuminating, and exhausting five days. I glanced over at Ayushi standing opposite me at the other side of the doorway to the Authors Lounge; soon the festival would end, and we would be saying goodbye.
When I returned to the U.S. from my first trip to India in December, 2014, I immediately began to conduct research about the country and to plan my nearly six-month trip. The Jaipur Literature Festival turned up in my Internet searches, and because I am a writer and literature enthusiast, and because I have volunteered for different worthy causes all my life, and because the idea of attending the world’s largest literature festival (advertising 240,000 visitors) seemed intimidating, I decided to offer to my volunteer services to the Festival. But to be sure they would take me on, I volunteered for the Jaipur Literature Festival’s inaugural U.S. outreach festival in Boulder, CO, in September 2015. The volunteer coordinators agreed to my offer to volunteer in Jaipur, and so, this is how I found myself standing across from Ayushi in the Authors Lounge on the last day of the Festival.
After five days volunteering in the Authors Lounge, I have a few gossipy stories in my repertoire…the celebrity who had a temper tantrum about the toilet situation; the very experienced speaker who nevertheless seemed quite nervous before his/her talk; the world-renown expert in an ancient, esoteric, nearly forgotten topic who nevertheless was so down-to-earth that we could joke together; another author sneaking to the upper terrace for some “air” in the otherwise non-smoking Diggi Palace, and so on. You might be forgiven for thinking this post would be about those stories, and more. But this blog is not a tabloid newspaper. Authors are human, with human foibles, after all. We don’t need to be reminded of this to make us laugh, or feel better than, or even superior to, celebrities.
No, this blog is about the unsung heroes of the Festival: The volunteers! Two-hundred-and-fifty young people, culled from a pool that had to be closed when applications numbered seventeen hundred. Unlike American volunteers, who are mostly over the age of 50, the volunteers are mostly college age. Apparently, unlike the U.S., India does not have a volunteer culture, or at least, not in the same way. When we introduced ourselves, the young volunteers did not hesitate to indicate that they applied to volunteer to enhance their C.V., likely because in India, a country of 1.2 billion people, every little edge is actually a very big edge.
We attended about 15 hours of pre-Festival training with scenario-imagining and teambuilding exercises. Once the Festival opened, every day for five days, many of us worked from 7:30 AM until 7:30 PM, with only a 15-minute daily sit-down break for lunch. We assisted with the Authors Lounge, registration, security, delegate management, information desk, author travel and accommodation, bookstore, book signing, digital media, backstage, sponsor lounges, and more. All day, for five days, we smiled, politely answered questions, dealt with unhappy authors and guests, and generally and without complaint, offered hospitality to every person we encountered.
I’m thinking of the young woman who stood at the front entrance of the Authors Lounge who checked every single badge and politely and firmly turned away scores of people who did not have permission to enter. Someone actually called her a “bulldog.” Maybe, but she was an effective bulldog, with a beautiful smile.
I’m thinking of the volunteers at the Registration desk who were berated by visitors who had to pay 100 rupees to register onsite because they had not registered online for free.
I’m thinking of the volunteers who endured the daily crush of people shopping in the bookstore.
I’m thinking of the volunteers who, like me, escorted panelists through thousands of festivalgoers to the backstage of a venue, preventing selfie-and-autograph hounds from delaying their timely appearance.
And likely there are many more unknown and unrecognized acts of hospitality.
What did the young volunteers receive for their trouble? They receive college credit for volunteering at the Festival and a small stipend, but more than that, they seemed to truly develop into a team and got satisfaction in knowing they contributed to a cultural extravaganza bigger than any one of us could manifest individually.
For people who volunteer regularly, like me, these benefits may come as no surprise. I was surprised, though, about one unexpected personal benefit. The mostly college-age young people were exceptionally hospitable to me, a very different type of volunteer: Their smiles and hugs and greetings and conversations; their repeated sincere invitations to the off-site evening music portion of the Festival; their inclusion of me in the dance circle at the music venue (and teaching me dance moves!); their care and concern for my health (of course I came down with a bad cold the day before the Festival opening); and their delightful post-Festival invitations to be Facebook friends.
I may have rubbed elbows with 100 or more celebrity authors in the Authors Lounge at the Jaipur Literature Festival, and that was grand. But I’m taking with me the memory of the young people of India. Like young people everywhere, they are energetic, enthusiastic, funny, and hopeful. But in the midst of the mind-blowing extravaganza of the Jaipur Literature Festival, they took the time to make me feel at home.
Thank you, Jaipur Literature Festival volunteers! You rock!
The Jaipur Literature Festival 2016 volunteers. Photo credit: Jaipur Literature Festival
Ayushi and I, Front Lawn Author Liaisons
On Photos Not Taken
January 10, 2016
Yesterday, I visited a Jaipur temple, Kanak Vrindavan. It involved walking a long steep zigzag path up to the top of a hill. The temple is frequently referred to as a monkey temple because of the many monkeys found along the way, not to mention boars, goats, cows, chipmunks, pigeons, and dogs. Very photogenic, as were the gorgeous scenes of the city of Jaipur below.
There were also worshippers making their way up to the temple: Women in saris and sneakers; families with children, groups of single men, a few tourists like me (some breathless Turks asked me if I had any cigarettes!). I encountered priests in a hut near the top of the hill singing and preparing offerings. There were barefoot worshippers come to pay homage. A group of adorable children showed me the Sun god and took me by the hand to show me the Hanuman god and gave me a “tikka” blessing of orange powder on my forehead. As I was leaving, the singing priests carried into the temple a silver-colored platter filled with a colorful offering of flowers and food.
I’ve been in India nearly a month. I’ve traveled to Delhi, around the state of Rajasthan, and now in Rajasthan’s capital city, Jaipur. I’ve visited many fascinating monuments; enjoyed natural wonders; I’ve stood amazed at the variety of animals (feral dogs, holy cows, goats, sheep, pigs, boars, monkeys, chipmunks, blue bulls, Indian antelope, Siberian cranes, cats, camels, elephants, Painted Storks, cobras, rats, etc.) in the streets and natural environments; and I’ve eaten fabulous food.
But the most interesting aspect of any visit to India is the people: Women of all classes and castes in breathtakingly beautiful but everyday saris, men in traditional clothing; men expertly driving tuk tuks, cycle rickshaws, and riding ramshackle bicycles through chaotic streets; whole families on motorcycles with women in saris riding sidesaddle cradling infants in their arms; turbaned sadhus (priests) in all white begging for alms; worshippers bringing puja (prayers and offerings) to the temple gods and goddesses; slum dwellers, sweepers, and begging acrobatic street children. Indians going about their private daily lives living very publicly on the street: Bathing at town center spigots, men urinating out in the open everywhere; people shopping at the chaotic crowded markets; families dressed in their very best while visiting monuments and other tourist destinations; the women-only Metro car in Delhi where working women in Western dress mingle with women in saris and hijab; women in saris carrying water jugs or loads of bricks on their heads. The riotous visual feast of color and confusion. People very different from me in beliefs, economic class, ethnicity, skin color, traditional practices, language, and political beliefs, differences which are often most clearly apprehended through clothing and appearance. The variety of expression is dizzying. I want to possess all of it on my camera, to show my family and friends and the world, to marvel at their exoticism. “Look,” I want to say. “Aren’t Indians amazing in their ‘difference’?”
Last year when I visited India, our small group followed our tour guide on a walking tour around a small village, Tordi Sagar. This was a very different experience than that of going about the larger cities like Delhi. As we walked past stone homes where village women crouched on porches watching us watch them, some with small children whom they encouraged to greet us with an adorable, “Hello,” and some operating spinning wheels, I felt conspicuous, like an intruder, into their 19th-century way of life. I felt that just by my very presence I was imposing my Western values which admittedly cannot all be called good. When we returned to the hotel, I began to weep. I asked our tour guide all kinds of questions about the women’s health, work, and welfare, but my tears remain a mystery to me even now. It’s not as if I want to romanticize a 19th-century way of living, and I certainly don’t want to romanticize 21st-century Western life. Why the tears?
I think my emotions may have been related to confronting the “other” in their home environment, and not from the distance afforded me while they went about their anonymous daily lives on the street. These were their homes, and they were real women, raising children, running households, and working, who were just as curious about me as I was about them. They got a good stare in, as did I. Perhaps those tears were tears of shame for my earlier objectification of Indians as cultural curiosities…but I may be giving myself too much credit.
Frequently, I am asked to pose in photos with Indian nationals. I am treated almost as if I am a celebrity. This can happen anywhere, anytime, and often it involves patiently waiting while my photo is taken with each member of the group. Sometimes it can become quite annoying. The other day, someone took my photo as I walked down the staircase to the Metro. Really? Did that one photo capture the essence of “me,” or even the essence of all my “identities?” (Late-middle-aged white woman in Western clothing who is probably Christian and English-speaking, apparently traveling alone—gasp—very carefully walking down steep stairs into the Delhi Metro.) But perhaps there is a certain justice to it.
The conundrum reminds me a bit about the anthropologists I read about in one of my graduate school courses who had to theorize, eventually, that they were unable to study the customs of the “natives,” or “savages,” without recognizing their own biases, and that it is impossible to be completely objective in reporting what they study—they bring their own cultural judgments and assumptions to their observations. Who’s to say who is “different?”
Last evening, after I returned back to my hotel, someone told me a story about one of her Thai friends who went to a temple in Bangkok dressed in traditional dress. This Thai woman was the subject of much conversation by English-speaking tourists who frequently snapped her photo as a “representative native,” and a curiosity. How did this story make its way to me? Because this Thai woman is a college student at a U.S. university and understands English perfectly. She conveyed this story to the person with whom I was conversing who then reported the experience to me. The young Thai woman was mortified to be subjected to this “othering,” to assumptions about her based on her ethnicity, dress, and location.
At the Kanak Vrindavan temple, I snapped photos of the walk, the animals, the temple, the view. I wanted to take photos of the people. I wanted them to be memorialized in my camera, on my Facebook page, on Instagram, on my blog, to use their images to promote my importance, my adventure. I’m still amazed and curious about people who are different than I am. But I did not succumb to this desperate desire.
I do regret the many photos not taken. I am not any better than the average tourist. Yesterday, though, I chose to regard the people around me as human beings and not as mere objects of photographic interest. But I still have 4 ½ months remaining in India. Every moment of every day I will have to make a choice. Who is this real person in view of my iPhone camera lens I am trying to categorize?
Who do I think I am?
Holding On
December 30, 2015
The overnight camel safari is over.
It was the adventure I was most looking forward to in the first part of my nearly six-month trip to India. This morning, as I lurched back and forth on top of the camel on the return to the jeep pickup location, I couldn’t help but feel an almost desperate desire to freeze frame this experience: The lower pelvic bones I had never before known existed, the intense sun and heat, the deep silence as we walked along except for the quiet chatter of our camel boys leading us forward, the alien scrub brush and yellow dunes stretching out before me with only a few dusty lone inhabitants in the distance. Could this really be happening? I wanted to hold on to this moment forever.
Endings are hard for me. I have never been very good at moving forward from experiences, good or bad. I grieve deeply for the happy endings, and even more deeply for the sad ones. Births, deaths, marriage, divorce, the changing of the seasons, the end of vacations, children growing up: All opportunities to grieve the passing of time. The ending of the overnight camel safari seemed especially poignant—when would I ever have this experience again?
We departed by jeep yesterday afternoon, bumping through the streets of Jaisalmer, dodging motorcycles, trucks, cows, pedestrians, dogs, and tuk tuks. In about an hour, we arrived at the site where the camels awaited us. Now was the moment I dreaded. The camel boy grabbed my daypack and wrapped the strap around the pommel and somehow I heaved myself up onto its back. And then…the camel stood up in its crazy ungainly way, first the back end, then the front. I held on to the pommel as tightly as I could and leaned back. My baggy polyester pants were slippery, and I slid a little to the left. Where was my riding helmet when I needed it? And then…I was riding a camel! But I couldn’t get a good grip on the pommel because the daypack strap took up so much space. I needed to hold on to that pommel for dear life, because the ride was uneven and bouncing and rocking. However was I going to manage this for two hours?
Posing for the camera on my camel.
Riding a camel takes a certain technique. You have to relax your lower back while gripping with your knees so your body jostles with the rolling motion. It’s something between riding a real horse and riding one of those bucking bronco rides in a Meijer store.
If you don’t relax, you are in for some serious back injury. I’m rocking and rolling along, readjusting my sitting position because of my slippery pants, holding on to that pommel and wondering just how far six kilometers is. By some coincidence, my camel is being led by the head camel boy. I look back at a turn, and our group of twelve looks magnificent. We could be the real deal. Even though it is late in the afternoon, the sun is blazing. The scrub landscape changes to sand dunes and the camels seem happier, their flat padded feet striking softly against the shifting ground.
Too soon we reach our campsite and the new challenge is dismounting the camel. It went down front legs first, then back. Again, I’m leaning back and holding on for dear life as it settled into the sand. I can’t swing my leg over, so the camel boy just tips the camel a little to the side and voila! Problem solved.
We walked a few steps to our campsite where 13 charpoys were arranged in an L-shape configuration. The changing hut, built of dry wood, would block any wind from our campsite. The “toilet bush” mocked us from about 50 yards away.
My charpoy, with the changing hut in the background.
I climb up a dune and survey the brilliant landscape of yellow and blue.
The Thar Desert and I.
Soon, the sun would set, but for now, I sit down on the sand and sip the chai which was unexpectedly delivered to me by one of the camp boys. The scene all around me is exotic, luxurious, yet rustic. Behind me, the camp cooks begin to busily prepare our dinner, the camels resting on their haunches on the sand.
Camp men preparing our dinner.
The men begin to make our beds: a mattress, sheet, two two-inch thick quilted blankets, and a pillow. The camel boys and cooks are dressed in rags and dusty shoes, their deference bought by the mighty dollar. Yet, I’m up on a sand dune, in the great Thar Desert of India. And I’m sipping chai. And waiting for the sunset.
The sun blazes magnificently across the sand, its rays seeming to melt the sky. The swirled clouds take on a magical golden glow. I turn and call to the others: The sunset is imminent. And yet, it is perhaps another 20 minutes before it has completely set. And then, there is the cloud show for another 45 minutes: The pink, purple, orange and golden hues are staggeringly beautiful. Now, sitting here typing this blogpost, I wonder why I do not plan to watch the sunset every evening. Something so mundane and yet so beautiful and often breathtaking.
The sunset over the Thar Desert.
Glorious after-sunset display.
We have been warned the air will be quite chilly overnight, so I go into the hut to change into my long johns and modest polar fleece pajamas. Then, as we sit on our charpoys, my tour companions bring out their special beverages. The campfire is lit and four performers dressed in traditional clothing join us. The two men begin to play, one on a hand drum and the other on a musical pipe that can sound two notes at the same time. The flames flicker over their faces, their songs alien and haunting. The two women stand up and dance, with sensual hips and hands and take us by the hands and invite us to join them. We can’t really follow their steps but we try and we dance joyfully and freely in the desert with our tour group strangers who by now have become friends, laughing as we struggle to move around the campfire on the heavy sand.
The musicians try to get us to sing some traditional Western campfire songs (Frẻre Jacques—there’s a new experience: hearing a French song sung by a traditional Rajasthani performer whose first language may not even be Hindi but a dialect). We fail because we are of two or three different generations and cultures (Australian and American) and don’t have campfire songs in common. One of the musicians plays a solo on an instrument something like a Jew’s harp and I wonder how this can be.
Then, the performance is over. I take our thank-you offering to them and show gratitude on behalf of the group. Soon, our dinner is served in the dark: Dal, rice, hot pickle, chapatti, and vegetables and chicken in sauce; and it is delicious, as delicious as any campfire food I’ve ever tasted. We eat by firelight and marvel how the cooks can prepare enough food onsite for so many people. And the men go around again, offering more.
After dinner, we talk quietly. A few of us go a little way away from the group and have their own party, wine bringing on giggling and rolling in the sand and laughing. The stars appear, and we identify brilliant Orion and the Milky Way. One by one the campers climb under the blankets on their charpoys, and, except for the little party off to the side, we quiet down. Then, we can see and hear off in the distance, a desert party, with a light show and loud raucous music. It is only 9:30 in the evening, and I want to be there, to see and experience the party. But I am around the campfire with my quiet tour group and must be content. I sit at the end of my charpoy, trying to get up the courage to walk over to the toilet bush alone and in the dark.
Then, I crawl under my blankets. At about ten o’clock, the music stops, and the little party over to the side ends, and they go to bed. Our camp sleeps around the dying embers of the fire, under the enormous sky pierced by intense stars. All is quiet except for rhythmic snoring and a few dogs barking in the distance.
I wake up with a start at about 1:30 AM. The moon has risen and casts a dazzling beacon light into our camp. I once again must answer nature’s call, yet I am not afraid, for the moonlight protects me. I return to my charpoy and toss and turn; I’ve got aches and pains from the camel ride, and I’m too warm. Since I can’t sleep, I reverse my bedding so that my head is now where my feet were so I can stare at the moon as it makes its way across the night sky.
When I wake up in the early light of morning, there is a chill in the air. I’m groggy as I get up and accept the breakfast offered: chai, bananas, biscuits, and crisps. We talk quietly about our differing sleep experiences. In a few minutes, the men have packed up our charpoys and bedding, and it is time to mount the camels for our ride back. I manage to put my leg over but can’t pull myself up astride the animal, so the camel boy offers me his arm, a slight expression of disgust on his face, and I’m up and once again rocking on the back of the beast. Once again, I’m holding onto that pommel for dear life. The sun is not quite as hot as last afternoon, but I’ve got my pink scarf completely wrapped around my head and face except for around my eyes.
Sun protection.
Seeing a camel on the level from astride my camel.
The scrub on the way out of the dune area.
Saying goodbye to my camel.
I don’t want it to end. But the camel keeps walking, and the sun keeps rising over the dunes. And within a few minutes, I let go of the pommel. I’m taking pictures, trying to capture it all.
Finding My Way
I’m lost.
None of my friends and family would be surprised by this. They know I can hardly distinguish right from left. But the way I’m lost this time is not directional, even though I misunderstood the hotel clerk who had suggested that one of the hotel men would guide me to the cell phone store and back. I followed him there and while I waited for service, he left. I had no idea how I had gotten to the store and no idea how to get back to the hotel. No, that is not how I get lost.
It’s not because when I arrived in New Delhi airport I discovered my hotel did not have a record of my reservation. That got all sorted out in a few minutes.
It’s not because I can’t find my way on the Metro or explore an archeological site on my own.
I’m lost in quite an unexpected way. I can’t get my cell phone to work after purchasing an Indian SIM card with minutes and data. First, I can’t figure out how to activate the card (you must call from another phone after about two days). Then, I can’t make outgoing calls or text messages, although I can receive them. When I visited India last year, I had no problem whatsoever. But this first week in India has brought a new set of challenges—technological ones.
Technology is almost foreign to me as India. Add to this misunderstandings, misinformation, and a little misogyny, and you have one lost traveler.
This is not how I expected or wanted to spend my first week in India. I did not come here to make five visits to the Vodaphone store, one long Metro trip to the Apple store, two hours chatting with a VerizonWireless representative, and countless hours backing up my phone and restoring it (with no real understanding about how to do that), then adding back all my apps via very slow hotel WiFi. No, that’s not how I had hoped to spend my first week in India. Everyone had an answer, but no one knew how to help me until I spoke to a VerizonWireless global assistance help line representative who mentioned the solution in an offhand way, the last resort of the four possibilities he gave me.
I came to India to find my way into a new life “after children.” It’s been 18 months since my youngest graduated from high school, and I’m shocked to discover that all the things I thought I had lined up to fill those empty spaces pale in comparison to the importance of raising children. As a single mother for 13 years, I devoted a lot of time, effort, and love to my children with the best possible attention I had to give them. And now I am staring down the next thirty years without a clear definable purpose.
I imagine it’s a lot like retirement. You make your work your life; it’s meaningful, challenging, and fulfilling, and then you get your gold watch, and then what? People think they’ll do all the things they’ve always wanted to do, but is self-gratification a way to spend the last third of your life?
The trip to India became something of an act of desperation, a goal to focus on, and a way to mark a transition from one life to another.
This isn’t the way I ever imagined my life would take. I never imagined I would be a single mother. I never imagined I’d find my life without much meaning after my children moved on into their new lives. And I never imagined I’d spend nearly six months in India seeking whatever traveling has to offer me.
No one can really help me through this transition, although everyone has lots of helpful advice. I have no idea how long it will take, and no doubt there will be unexpected challenges ahead. But if my determination to resolve the technological phone problem is any indication (even though it took a week), there is hope.
India has already helped me begin to find my way.
Pregnant
The other day I was thinking, “What was I thinking?” Planning a six-month trip to India, at that point, seemed an exercise in madness. I was in the throes of preparing my packing list, preparing the house, preparing my car for storage, preparing last minute travel arrangements. The process reminded me of pregnancy: The long months of waiting and then the rush of preparations near the birth. It’s been about twenty years since I was pregnant, but I well remember the long months of waiting with only a monthly obstetrical appointment in the beginning and the vague sense that something was different in my body, with the expectation my life would be different in the future but in an unknown way. There was a sense of mystery, of something happening in and around me but I couldn’t really grasp it because it was unseen.
Then, as I remember, there is, about two months before the arrival of a baby, a rush of preparations. There is a sense the baby is really coming now, and it is time to get the nursery ready, to purchase all the necessary equipment (crib, stroller, bedding, clothes, supplies, high chair, port-a-crib, baby backpack, front carrier, etc.). There’s studying the manual about how to take care of a baby, how to keep the baby safe. There’s probably a baby shower with friends and family expressing their happiness for you and giving you their best advice. Doctor’s appointments are more frequent with further in-depth testing. You might have extra tasks at work to plan for maternity leave. (You might even be predisposed to the “nesting instinct,” which makes you want to thoroughly clean your house. You think this is in preparation for the baby’s arrival, but what you find out later it is because it is probably the last time you’ll have a clean house for the next 18 years.) And there’s this unspoken deeply buried anxiety that things might not go right with labor and delivery or you might not be adequate as a parent, the moments of “what was I thinking” that no one wants to acknowledge. In all this frenzy of activity it is hard to remember that there is actually a new person arriving in your family because it is hard to imagine who that person is and what that little person will be like and hard to really get a sense of how he/she will alter your life. And then the baby arrives, whether or not you are ready.
Planning a six-month trip to India is a lot like that. Early in January when I dreamed the dream of returning to India—dates, flight, tours—the idea seemed a vague but exciting adventure. I spent the next few months reading up about India, watching Bollywood movies, and making a half-hearted attempt to learn Hindi. I had lists of things I wanted to accomplish before I left, but, just as the coming of a baby seems unreal, the trip seemed unreal.
Then, around the first of October, I woke up from this dream. The trip was coming! There was so much I didn’t know about traveling overseas for six months. What do you do about utilities and other bills and long-distance banking? Prescriptions? Immunizations? Visa? What do you do about your mail for that long? What do you do with your house, your yard, your car, your other responsibilities? And not least: How do you pack for India for six months? There were so many questions for which I had no immediate answers that I created a binder for the trip, with a page for each item that needed to be addressed.
And I started making phone calls, doing Internet research, and taking notes. So many decisions! So much to do! The lists. And more lists. And even more lists.
There were surprises along the way: The two-week fight with my health insurance company for six months of anti-malarial medication coverage (I lost. Only three months coverage); the visa application mistake the third-party agency caught (thank goodness); the purchase of items I ended up returning due to lack of luggage space; not to mention the close examination of the nevertheless incomprehensible list of allowable liquids in what quantities in which luggage item. And the discovery that cans of insect repellent with twist-top lids do exist. Also, when you have your mail forwarded to a P.O. box from your home address, the mail goes back up to the distribution center (in my case, Detroit) before being redelivered to my local post office where my box is located. No such thing as just plopping those late-ordered Amazon items in my P.O. box from the get-go.
Travel safety. Now there’s an issue. There was the recent discovery of the CDC health safety kit recommendations for India (http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/india/traveler/packing-list). Those items alone take up half my carry on roller bag! The list includes a “suture kit.” I got my doctor to write the letter and picked up the item at the hospital pharmacy. I expected a needle and thread. Here’s what I got:
Sadly, it is not going with me.
Then there was the little notification on the camel safari tour that no riding helmets are provided. Yes, you guessed it. I am that person. I purchased a riding helmet:
This is also not going with me. What was I thinking? I may not be the type of person cut out for international adventure tours.
Then, the recommendations by friends, family, acquaintances, and websites: Nicer versus casual traveling clothes, number and type of pants and shoes, number and type of underwear, SPF 30 sunblock versus SPF 50, sleeping bag and sheet (mummy or rectangular, permethrin treated or not), bed net, locking cable for backpack, condoms (!), personal safety items such as pepper spray, whistle, doorstop, and RFID sleeves for credit cards, Rotary membership, and so on. Many people, loving, concerned and helpful, are figuratively “patting my belly.”
Now it’s down to the last couple of days. My bags are packed…mostly. Lot of last-minute things remain, though. People ask me if I’m excited about my trip. Am I taking a trip to India? I want to ask them. I’m so busy preparing for the adventure that I can’t imagine what it will be like once I’ve begun it.
But one thing is for sure: I am giving birth to this trip, whether I’m ready or not. Join me for six months of travel to India to find out what life after the “baby” is like.
Itinerary
About Debra
A trip to India in November-December 2014 so completely stunned Debra Nicholson that she vowed to return as soon as possible. Following her nearly six months’ second trip to India, from December 2015-May 2016, which included a camel safari in the Thar Desert, volunteering at the Jaipur Literature Festival, a two-month train tour around the perimeter of the country, and Bollywood dance and Hindi classes in Delhi, she continues to post on her blog, The Laughing Camel, about her adventures.