I've moved my blog to WP: idefiningi.wordpress.com
July 20, 2014
travel (n., v.)
I know it to be foolish to attempt to share my recent travel experience in a blog post. Even speaking to my friends about some of what I encountered in India has been difficult, as words don't do the experience justice, merely scraping the surface of something very...thick. Photos fail as complete aids too, as they only capture a single layer of a stupefyingly complex sensory experience.
I've travelled many a place in my short life (I counted 5 countries within the last year alone) but this was the first time that I got a glimpse of travel as "travail" - a difficult journey.
Originally, any form of "travel" (in the Middle Ages, whence the word originated) was found to be difficult, labourious, hence the etymology. But over the centuries, travel as we have come to know it has become easier - less about necessity and transportation and more about choice and place. We travel to find respite from the everyday, in an aim to encounter something new. It's beyond the experience of the journey of getting to a place and more about being at the destination itself.
It's about what starts upon arrival.
For the first time in my life, this wasn't entirely the case for me. My departure for India started weeks before I found myself in any close proximity to an airplane. And my arrival and experience while there has extended far beyond the time when I returned to Canadian soil.
I went into it with a head full of facts, of "don't do's" and "avoid that's," of cautionary tales and reminders - all realistic and justified but also barriers to a full experience. So, as with any travel (or at least the kind I prefer and gravitate to), I committed to going in with an open heart. I wrapped my head around expectations and assumptions, and then tried to let go.
I tried to train myself to be aware, tough, and cautious while also trusting, warm, and conscientious so that I could hit the streets, enter dark places, speak to people and be a participant and not a mere observer. I wanted to build my understanding of India from scratch, which is why it's been difficult to convey fully.
Following heart rather than head discouraged me from yielding to fear, so that I could feed my curiosities and connect with the place and actually feel it. Years of traveling and generally aiming to be open to new experiences in everyday life, has helped me hone not just my inner voice but my inner ear as well. I truly got to test that intuition and approach in India. And it was hard work.
I let my heart lead, and supported by my stomach, that gut feeling, I became more confident in listening to my intuition and not just my reason, which was often guided by cultural shock and fear and awkwardness.
Daily, my senses were inundated with a myriad of impossible happenings occurring all in a relatively small, but very real, space.
(I have a distinct memory of a colourfully clad woman with a sack of something that looked pretty heavy on her head, holding two babies in one arm, her other hand busied with manouvering her sari to cover her mouth as she stepped into a cloud of vapour and mist. My eyes followed her steps as she merged into an intersection where she was met by a speeding rickshaw that missed her hip by a few inches, a surprisingly fast-moving cement roller with an elderly half-naked turbaned man crouching at its wheel, his knees jutted out by his ears, and below her at her bare feet, a deformed young man struggling to move himself forward on a small wooden cart. She squeezed by a black, bony cow obliviously dawdling next to her, miraculously avoiding the dung and burning garbage (read: open flames) on the unpaved ground. Accompany this short four-second frame with a cacophony of honks, horns, bells, and incomprehensible human and animal voices, and a heavy humidity in the air that carries dozens of odours and fragrances that stick to your skin and sting your eyes, and you'll still have a vague understanding.)
In the regions I visited of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and particularly in the city markets (Kinari in Agra, for example, from which I drew the above sequence) it was hard not to gape in awe, with eyes, tongue, ears, nostrils, fingers, all ready to take in the scene in all its various forms. But I had to consciously remind myself to open my heart.
Amidst the hodgepodge of machinery and limbs, noise, colours and smells and mire, I searched for opportunity when most everything seemed to teem with risk (whether serious danger or the potential of contracting the dreaded "delhi belly"). With effort, the initial miasma of Indian life, of that traffic, poverty, and filth (garbage in all four states) transformed into a kind of magical show, though: A medley of unlikely occurrences and dense bits of experience that came together making me believe there was no single other possible way this place could be. In the villages and smaller towns, this remained to be true; it just came in smaller, though equally concentrated, doses.
It was hard work, remaining cautious without being paranoid; my eyes darted about seeking eye contact without the lens of a viewfinder. I aggressively bartered through offers (a true Yugo, I am!), but modestly accepted puja offerings (pretended to taste and swallow the sweet sticky mess). I wove conversations but knew when to untangle myself and respectfully bid goodbye; I removed my shoes along with my prejudices; and thanks to my heart, I discovered similarities in a place that could not have been more unfamiliar or uncomfortable to me.
A land of contrasts. I salivated between wafts of indescribably disgusting odours, laughed heartily with people amidst an unbearable presence of stark hardships, shuddered at fifty degrees, and sometimes, just didn't know what to feel except present.
India, despite its initial hard exterior, was an incredibly inviting, pleasant, even at times, relaxing, place. In the presence of a lot of misery, I found a lot of joy, celebration, and kindness - the kind you find everywhere where there is human life. Even the notoriously aggressive touts when approached the right way, with respect, backbone and warmth, reciprocated, dropping their greedy guise to offer a smile and a joke.
It wasn't easy to arrive at this kind of India; it took a certain effort and altering of attitude to step up, open up, and enter. But I expected this, and prepared myself for it. What I didn't foresee was the difficulty that I'd experience in not just getting there or being there, but in coming home.
I'm still in a bit of a dream-like state since I returned. Looking around me, I'm peering through haze, but a different kind now. It's not one seen as easily as the one that so persistently hovered in the Indian air (the weather app for Delhi usually read "haze" and on one occasion even "smoke").
I'd like to think I'm thinking clearly, especially given the space I now have to reflect on my travels - this clean, quiet Vancouver of squeaky glass, even pavement and picturesque scenery and greenery. Returning to an orderly life, where everything is so void of..distractions..with nothing vying for my attention but the dreaded iPhone notifications I succumb to is more difficult than I thought.
Staying put, a travail of its own...
I've travelled many a place in my short life (I counted 5 countries within the last year alone) but this was the first time that I got a glimpse of travel as "travail" - a difficult journey.
Originally, any form of "travel" (in the Middle Ages, whence the word originated) was found to be difficult, labourious, hence the etymology. But over the centuries, travel as we have come to know it has become easier - less about necessity and transportation and more about choice and place. We travel to find respite from the everyday, in an aim to encounter something new. It's beyond the experience of the journey of getting to a place and more about being at the destination itself.
It's about what starts upon arrival.
For the first time in my life, this wasn't entirely the case for me. My departure for India started weeks before I found myself in any close proximity to an airplane. And my arrival and experience while there has extended far beyond the time when I returned to Canadian soil.
I went into it with a head full of facts, of "don't do's" and "avoid that's," of cautionary tales and reminders - all realistic and justified but also barriers to a full experience. So, as with any travel (or at least the kind I prefer and gravitate to), I committed to going in with an open heart. I wrapped my head around expectations and assumptions, and then tried to let go.
I tried to train myself to be aware, tough, and cautious while also trusting, warm, and conscientious so that I could hit the streets, enter dark places, speak to people and be a participant and not a mere observer. I wanted to build my understanding of India from scratch, which is why it's been difficult to convey fully.
Following heart rather than head discouraged me from yielding to fear, so that I could feed my curiosities and connect with the place and actually feel it. Years of traveling and generally aiming to be open to new experiences in everyday life, has helped me hone not just my inner voice but my inner ear as well. I truly got to test that intuition and approach in India. And it was hard work.
I let my heart lead, and supported by my stomach, that gut feeling, I became more confident in listening to my intuition and not just my reason, which was often guided by cultural shock and fear and awkwardness.
Daily, my senses were inundated with a myriad of impossible happenings occurring all in a relatively small, but very real, space.
(I have a distinct memory of a colourfully clad woman with a sack of something that looked pretty heavy on her head, holding two babies in one arm, her other hand busied with manouvering her sari to cover her mouth as she stepped into a cloud of vapour and mist. My eyes followed her steps as she merged into an intersection where she was met by a speeding rickshaw that missed her hip by a few inches, a surprisingly fast-moving cement roller with an elderly half-naked turbaned man crouching at its wheel, his knees jutted out by his ears, and below her at her bare feet, a deformed young man struggling to move himself forward on a small wooden cart. She squeezed by a black, bony cow obliviously dawdling next to her, miraculously avoiding the dung and burning garbage (read: open flames) on the unpaved ground. Accompany this short four-second frame with a cacophony of honks, horns, bells, and incomprehensible human and animal voices, and a heavy humidity in the air that carries dozens of odours and fragrances that stick to your skin and sting your eyes, and you'll still have a vague understanding.)
In the regions I visited of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and particularly in the city markets (Kinari in Agra, for example, from which I drew the above sequence) it was hard not to gape in awe, with eyes, tongue, ears, nostrils, fingers, all ready to take in the scene in all its various forms. But I had to consciously remind myself to open my heart.
Amidst the hodgepodge of machinery and limbs, noise, colours and smells and mire, I searched for opportunity when most everything seemed to teem with risk (whether serious danger or the potential of contracting the dreaded "delhi belly"). With effort, the initial miasma of Indian life, of that traffic, poverty, and filth (garbage in all four states) transformed into a kind of magical show, though: A medley of unlikely occurrences and dense bits of experience that came together making me believe there was no single other possible way this place could be. In the villages and smaller towns, this remained to be true; it just came in smaller, though equally concentrated, doses.
It was hard work, remaining cautious without being paranoid; my eyes darted about seeking eye contact without the lens of a viewfinder. I aggressively bartered through offers (a true Yugo, I am!), but modestly accepted puja offerings (pretended to taste and swallow the sweet sticky mess). I wove conversations but knew when to untangle myself and respectfully bid goodbye; I removed my shoes along with my prejudices; and thanks to my heart, I discovered similarities in a place that could not have been more unfamiliar or uncomfortable to me.
A land of contrasts. I salivated between wafts of indescribably disgusting odours, laughed heartily with people amidst an unbearable presence of stark hardships, shuddered at fifty degrees, and sometimes, just didn't know what to feel except present.
India, despite its initial hard exterior, was an incredibly inviting, pleasant, even at times, relaxing, place. In the presence of a lot of misery, I found a lot of joy, celebration, and kindness - the kind you find everywhere where there is human life. Even the notoriously aggressive touts when approached the right way, with respect, backbone and warmth, reciprocated, dropping their greedy guise to offer a smile and a joke.
It wasn't easy to arrive at this kind of India; it took a certain effort and altering of attitude to step up, open up, and enter. But I expected this, and prepared myself for it. What I didn't foresee was the difficulty that I'd experience in not just getting there or being there, but in coming home.
I'm still in a bit of a dream-like state since I returned. Looking around me, I'm peering through haze, but a different kind now. It's not one seen as easily as the one that so persistently hovered in the Indian air (the weather app for Delhi usually read "haze" and on one occasion even "smoke").
I'd like to think I'm thinking clearly, especially given the space I now have to reflect on my travels - this clean, quiet Vancouver of squeaky glass, even pavement and picturesque scenery and greenery. Returning to an orderly life, where everything is so void of..distractions..with nothing vying for my attention but the dreaded iPhone notifications I succumb to is more difficult than I thought.
Staying put, a travail of its own...
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| More pics from my trip here... |
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