You can review all photos taken so far here via Flickr.
On February 19th, I began a journey to India for the primary reason of attending a close friend’s wedding. A 5 hour bus ride to NYC followed by 4 planes where I transferred in London, Kuwait and Mumbai and finally a taxi ride for an hour has brought me to the city of New Delhi. The astonishing thing about this journey is that it was mostly a 24 hour trip but, with the power of time zones, my Saturday at 5AM bus ride had me in New Delhi Monday at 1PM local time. I curse the time zone gods.
I’m writing this post from the left-side passenger seat of our hired driver who is taking us from New Delhi to Agra to see more friends and visit the Taj Mahal. I hear that Agra doesn’t have a lot to do besides the monument but that doesn’t stop millions of people from visiting it each year and snapping photos. I do consider myself an adventurer and fantasize sometimes about that scene in Benjamin Button where he sells his yacht, buys a motorcycle and travels the world including a scene where he’s washing clothes in an Indian river. I look at that scene and wish that I was doing that. Then, I eat a fried pastry on the side of the road at 8AM with a dozen locals and remember, yeah, I am doing that.
As a young boy, I saw moving and traveling as an act of running away from something or perhaps the journey of finding ourselves but I was always taught that we already have everything we need inside and need that spark to help us realize who we are and our full potential. I don’t hop around because I’m bored; I do it because I’m grateful and excited at the opportunity to witness things that startle me and force me to love, touch and accept all walks of life.
It’s a powerful feeling to travel and experience these moments.
Moving on, India is the most unique experience I’ve ever had in my life right alongside the experience of my father saying “punch me” again and again for hours as he through me to the ground in a thousand different ways in front of a class consisting of 30 fellow martial artists. That experience changed my life and so has India.
The traffic in India is something different that inspires me to be a better driver aside from the fact that driving this way in the US would get me arrested. To quote my new friend Paul, “Driving in India is controlled chaos.” There are no lanes and traffic lights mean nothing. You signal your approach to drivers, taxis, bicycles, pedestrians and more by the way of a quick push of the horn and they move aside. We just passed a man riding an elephant and beside him was a young girl on a scooter. The highways in India are public roads for everyone and they all share this space as one big family. Road rage is never displayed and if you’re hungry, just pull over and grab some chicken tandori from a woman with a fire going along side the road.
Most Americans are afraid of the chaos. I’d say America doesn’t have enough of it. The term, “lighting a fire under your ass” comes to mind. In India, school children’s final exams are published in the newspaper for everyone to see. This makes the kids hyper competitive and they get into universities based on this grade. If you’re in the top 1,000 for the entire country of India, where you attend university is up to you. The same goes for lines, jobs, getting food and pretty much everything in India. No one curses you for getting in front of them. In fact, they respect it but, if you don’t step out and take your share, it’s absolutely true that you’ll go hungry. The hunger for success is what makes China and India so competitive and it’s that way of life that takes the share of pie away from America each year. I feel like everyone in India has a respect for each other and you won’t be attacked for doing what you can to get ahead because, if given the chance, the other guy would have done the same thing.
The absence of radical religions is comforting. What an odd statement about India given that there is a large percentage of the population is Muslim. Then again, I’d say that any holy war going on in the middle-east pales in comparison to the holy wars waged by Christians over the past thousand years; a holy war that continues today even though we call it “missionary work”. I’ll save that view for another blog post. To bring things back to my point, there are many religions here all functioning in harmony and there is an absence of “my god is better than your god” and rarely does religion make its way into the state politics. Religion is something everyone in India has but it works to make them better people than to tear each other apart.
Temples in India for the Hindu religion are erected along side Muslim Mosques. You can surely quit your job and live off the land in a monastery. In fact, many people do and meeting these people is something special. The religious space in India is personal. Your choice, your religion, your life. You worship who you want and the only goal is to be a better person and live a better life.
Of course, I’m reading this out loud as I write it and want to note that anyone reading may say that my excitement for the lifestyle here is only because it’s new because there’s no ignoring the fact that many thousands of Indians relocate to the US each week to embrace our culture. I feel that those coming to America are hungry for opportunity and their children are working to attend our best schools and even though there is a stereotype of Indians running gas stations in the US, I respect those people because they own their own business and you can’t say the same for many Americans.
It’s brutally apparent at how poor people are here. Not everyone is poor but many are. A large percentage of residents of India live off the land and farm their own food. They live in huts made of grass and cow pies (good for insulation of heat) and they often can’t send their kids to school due to distance or because the only good schools are private ones. It’s a life that many Americans were living just 80-100 years ago. The people of India living in shacks are very clean and wearing brightly colored clothing and eating home made quality food. They have jobs and work to save and buy food for their family. The only difference between India and the US is that America has more space and people can really spread out. Here, towns consist of millions of people and without a car, you have to live in town which means small shacks right next to each other.
For those that have money, it’s easy to live and enjoy the very best that India has to offer. One dollar gets you 50 rupees and a 5 star hotel costs no more than $200 or a soda I bought at a local market was 12 rupees (about 40 cents). Everything about India is cheaper. I converted $1,000 into 50,000+ rupees and have been living well for a week. 50K rupees is far more than most people here make in a year. That’s just the reality of where I am.
There is a community feeling here that everyone is in it together. Everyone relies on each other and I think this comes from the struggle of daily life. In the US, we live in our cookie cutter houses and the arguments, fights and child rearing takes place behind closed doors and, in America, you’re only judged by your car and the green grass on your lawn. Here, the life of a typical Indian is very open and exposed. If you fall on hard times, people will be there to support you.
We were racing to the airport one day in our cab and he had to keep asking for directions to it and people kept offering help as we stopped every few blocks to ask strangers who were on the street cooking or building furniture or walking their kids to school. Our car got stuck in a huge man hole and, out of nowhere, 25 men gathered and helped us get it out asking that we just get in the car. Complete strangers were there to help. This is simply not something you’d see that often in the US, especially in a big city. In America, asking for a favor from a stranger will ruin their day. Here, it’s a chance to renew their karma and help a new friend. I can’t remember the times I’ve seen someone broken down on the side of the road and heard friends and family say, “if we stop, that person might kill us or something so we’re just gonna keep driving.” In the US, everything is a scam…or at least that’s what we’ve been conditioned to think.
Scammers in India aren’t as well done as what I’ve had living in San Francisco. The person who wants your money is usually a child or a man with a ride, better hotel, or good restaurant. They want you to buy their things or go with them. Saying no is all you have to do. The children have more interest in meeting you than actually getting your money. The white skin is something interesting to them and the amount of times I will be appearing on someone’s fridge is countless as I’ve been snapped dozens of times by kids who would have their friends snap pictures of me and them together. The women in their colorful clothing would stand alongside our female companions and get photos with them. Somewhere, I’m in someone’s scrap book and that is a bit weird.
I had a great time chatting with the children learning of their families. Survival gets in the way of family ties here and this is sad. We’re lucky to have what we have in the US with family being such a societal thing because most of us have what we need to survive (even if it’s not much). Our driver for 4 days is based in Delhi but his family lives 500 kilometers away and he only sees them once every 3 months for a weekend. They can’t relocate so he sends money back to them. You could see this bothered him immensely but he had a job to do and did it. I see a lot of that in India.
The children would ask where you were from and all would say, “ahhh, America! Barrack Obama, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan. Very good country.” Those were the children who were being hustled. They all belonged to one person and he sent them out to get money which was well depicted in Slumdog Millionaire. The kids who didn’t do that were being sent out by their parents or those kids were homeless and alone and may end up in gangs or owned by the aforementioned hustlers. Breaking out of that lifestyle is difficult and, for most, impossible. Kids here are still kids in their smile and trust and love of life was not broken yet. Despite the dried mud on his feet and tattered shirt, the boy I met at a tomb sat cross-legged with me and introduced me to a photo of his sister and talked of his father who was a farmer. He asked about the US and asked if he could have a souvenir from America so I gave him my San Francisco key chain and his eyes lit up. He asked for my hat and did it very respectful and said he loves hats. When I responded that it was a gift from a friend, he quickly said, “oh, then you should keep it. gifts are very very important.” He understood the meaning of what a gift meant and no amount of hunger or homelessness would change that.
I asked a new found friend who is from Mumbai a hypothetical question and I laugh at the idiocy of it but can’t help but keep thinking about it. “If I were to sell everything and come over here to a random country farm, would the people adopt me if I promised to work their farm and learn the language?” She said of course and you could live here for a year on as little as $1,000 assuming you build your own hut and worked the farm. Most people know good English so you could get by not even knowing how to speak theirs. She added that they’d probably think I was stupid or insane because, “Indians wish they could be in American and you’re the crazy American that’s coming here.”
She has a point but it’s something I’d entertain. Sure, the job I have and family would have to wait. My parents would pretty much not have contact with me for the entire journey of 6 months to 2 years and I wouldn’t have a computer or modern technology. I’d be completely unplugged with a single pair of sandals but, for some insane reason, I kind of want to do that. Does that sound insane? To most people it does, but to some adventurers out there, the thought of going through that is very very exciting. Imagine selling everything, moving to the country in another country and working the land for a year? Wow. This probably would never happen but I’d really consider it. Also, I’m only 24 so I have plenty of time to do it.
That is the single most surprising thing about this trip so far. It’s that despite the poverty, lack of “standards of living” and despite the small living quarters, minimal selection of food and diseases that I’ve never experienced, I find myself very attracted to the way of life. Is this some problem of, “boo hooo, I have it so great in America but it’s so boring.” issue that most people go through. The thought that the billionaires of the world are miserable because they just bought a 3rd jet airplane and they’ll adopt a 12th African child to add some spice to their life? Maybe so. That might be the case. I guess, while thinking out loud, this is something attractive to me and something I could see myself doing for a trial of 6 months.
I’d like to end things at here for now. I’ve written so much that it’s already a blog post that’s far too long. I’ll have another post coming soon but it’s Friday and I’m now in Mumbai on day 5 of my journey. I still have 5 more days. Thanks for reading and for following. It’s nice to have this outlet where I can share these thoughts with the world.