I'm currently in Dharamkot, a stone throw from the Dalai Lama temple. Unfortunately I feel sick, the last 3 days have been a wash, I barely left my room. This morning I feel better but let's just say that there are signs that I am still sick.
I started getting issues around the time that we started our journey here, the place that is for all 4 of us our last destination. After this Inga and Jacek goes back to Poland, Joonas goes back to Finland and I go back to Canada.
The evening that we got here we went to a cafe that served cakes and good coffee, very strange for India. The floor was clean and even, the chairs matched, the corners of the table were rounded and perfect, the staff was attentive and quiet, the lighting was soft and serene, the patrons were reading books with crossed legs, everything perfectly sanitized... the exact picture of a snazzy cafe you can find in the evening anywhere around the Western world. Mcleod Ganj is different than the rest of India, it is about 2000m up in the Himalayas and tourism here seems to cater to a more middle class, middle age, trekking community, with more money than the average backpacker. After being the visible minority for the last 3 months (since Goa) I can't help but notice that there are a lot of white faces here.
As we sat in this sterile environment tired and on the verge of illness Joonas (who's also not well at the moment) and I concurred that we felt a sharp heavy lump in the pit of our stomach, our countries were going to be fishing us out of India soon and this is the world that is waiting for us. It might seem strange to other for us to feel out of place because there is no one spitting on the floor, no constant beeping from 50 rickshaws around, no view of someone pissing against a wall outside, no merchant outside shouting at the top of his lungs "potatos and oignons", no ripped up dinning chairs that are stained and smelly, no views (or smells) of cows (sometimes small children) taking a dump on the street, no dirty children begging for 5 roupies, no death trap floors with holes and sharp edges, no loud drunk Indian men staring, no heap of hot smelly garbage just outside the door... I could go on for hours listing the quirks that are unimaginable in our countries that are part of the daily life of the 1.2 billion people in India.
I remind the reader of the population because I want to point out that we are often quick to think that we have it right. Do all these people really have it wrong? If so why is it that some Westerners come here and end up fearing leaving India more than they feared coming? I feel that in some ways I'm repeating myself from other blogs but I feel like there is a perceptive here that is different than before, I'm afraid of going back home. I'm afraid of being bored, I'm afraid of getting comfortable, I'm afraid that I'm going to be sucked back into the 4 walls of a perfect little nest, I'm afraid I'll reach out to new people just to be shut down because they are firmly wedge into their own 4 walls of Western ideology or even worse, they just don't want to be bothered by some strange person.
I've come to the conclusion that it is like this: if you took the average person's mind with all the confusion, the fears, the dreams, the nightmares, the imagination, the emotional baggage, the love, the bullshit, the color, the incessant chatter etc and used that internal mess to create a world to live in you would have India. In the West we don't want to see the world in such a real way so we sanitize our outer world. We constantly try to put controls in place thinking that we can stop bad things from happening. We throw things away that are good but maybe a bit stained because we don't like to see imperfections even though we are full of them. India is reality. There is no hiding from anything here. I may have had bad days here and I may sometimes think that I've had it with the absurdity of many situations I've encountered but I LOVE having reality stare me in the face. I feel more real and alive than at any other times in my life and I'm sick at the thought of leaving it behind.
Some people get sick when they get to India, the clear sight of reality is harsh. Apparently some people get sick leaving it...
I started getting issues around the time that we started our journey here, the place that is for all 4 of us our last destination. After this Inga and Jacek goes back to Poland, Joonas goes back to Finland and I go back to Canada.
The evening that we got here we went to a cafe that served cakes and good coffee, very strange for India. The floor was clean and even, the chairs matched, the corners of the table were rounded and perfect, the staff was attentive and quiet, the lighting was soft and serene, the patrons were reading books with crossed legs, everything perfectly sanitized... the exact picture of a snazzy cafe you can find in the evening anywhere around the Western world. Mcleod Ganj is different than the rest of India, it is about 2000m up in the Himalayas and tourism here seems to cater to a more middle class, middle age, trekking community, with more money than the average backpacker. After being the visible minority for the last 3 months (since Goa) I can't help but notice that there are a lot of white faces here.
As we sat in this sterile environment tired and on the verge of illness Joonas (who's also not well at the moment) and I concurred that we felt a sharp heavy lump in the pit of our stomach, our countries were going to be fishing us out of India soon and this is the world that is waiting for us. It might seem strange to other for us to feel out of place because there is no one spitting on the floor, no constant beeping from 50 rickshaws around, no view of someone pissing against a wall outside, no merchant outside shouting at the top of his lungs "potatos and oignons", no ripped up dinning chairs that are stained and smelly, no views (or smells) of cows (sometimes small children) taking a dump on the street, no dirty children begging for 5 roupies, no death trap floors with holes and sharp edges, no loud drunk Indian men staring, no heap of hot smelly garbage just outside the door... I could go on for hours listing the quirks that are unimaginable in our countries that are part of the daily life of the 1.2 billion people in India.
I remind the reader of the population because I want to point out that we are often quick to think that we have it right. Do all these people really have it wrong? If so why is it that some Westerners come here and end up fearing leaving India more than they feared coming? I feel that in some ways I'm repeating myself from other blogs but I feel like there is a perceptive here that is different than before, I'm afraid of going back home. I'm afraid of being bored, I'm afraid of getting comfortable, I'm afraid that I'm going to be sucked back into the 4 walls of a perfect little nest, I'm afraid I'll reach out to new people just to be shut down because they are firmly wedge into their own 4 walls of Western ideology or even worse, they just don't want to be bothered by some strange person.
I've come to the conclusion that it is like this: if you took the average person's mind with all the confusion, the fears, the dreams, the nightmares, the imagination, the emotional baggage, the love, the bullshit, the color, the incessant chatter etc and used that internal mess to create a world to live in you would have India. In the West we don't want to see the world in such a real way so we sanitize our outer world. We constantly try to put controls in place thinking that we can stop bad things from happening. We throw things away that are good but maybe a bit stained because we don't like to see imperfections even though we are full of them. India is reality. There is no hiding from anything here. I may have had bad days here and I may sometimes think that I've had it with the absurdity of many situations I've encountered but I LOVE having reality stare me in the face. I feel more real and alive than at any other times in my life and I'm sick at the thought of leaving it behind.
Some people get sick when they get to India, the clear sight of reality is harsh. Apparently some people get sick leaving it...
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