We began our trip in Japuir, a city that is home to the magnificent Amber Fort and an old theater where we caught a Bollywood movie. The movie was 3 hours long and had an intermission! It was all in Hindi but we were able to catch the crazy story line and almost kept ourselves from falling asleep amongst the crowds hooting, hollering and whistling at 12:30am.
Next we traveled to the town of Pushkar. It is cleaner than many other parts of Indian, the shopkeepers are a little mellower and there is a magnificent lake that centers the town. Every restaurant and many hotels have a “Lake View” sign, “the best view, the perfect look, the closest.” We even had our drum lessons on the lawn of a hotel that is right on the lake, one thing though - the lake was dried up and had been for about a year (don’t worry we knew about this ahead of time). We loved Pushkar and could only imagine how it would be with a beautiful lake in the middle. This was the first time in a long time, if ever, that the lake had been empty. There were many rumors about how it dried up I think we figured out is was somewhere in between a dry monsoon season and it being so dirty people were getting sick and it need to be emptied and cleaned (it is also a place where pilgrims flocked, like a very mini Varanasi). Pushkar is one of those towns that hold you and you don’t feel the rush to get to the next place. The stray dogs even seem happier, responding to you when you speak to them instead of running away sheepishly.
For 8 days we allowed ourselves to be lost in this place, filling our days with activities that we would not have necessarily made the time to do back home. We found a yoga place and enrolled in drumming lessons on traditional Indian drums called Nagara drums (Alan even bought a set and we thought to ourselves where are those going to go?). This all began at an evening drum circle around a campfire. Alan is always drumming rhythms with his fingers and I thought it would be great for him. He struck up a conversation with one of the men hosting the event and it turns out that he had performed at Lincoln Center in NYC, 2 blocks from our old apartment the previous month (we have been having a lot of synchronistic moments here in India). He also began telling stories of his days playing with The Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones. In addition to all this, I decided to take a Reflexology course and was away from Alan every afternoon for the first time since we left. Our guesthouse was wonderful, family run, with levels of roof gardens and we easily settled ourselves into a roof top room decorated in saris.
We also tried Pancha Karma. I had always known Pancha Karma to be a wonderfully relaxing experience where oil is dripped slowly on your forehead followed by a full body massage with two masseuses on either side of you working simultaneously. We tried a different kind of Pancha Karma, as in yoga cleansing Pancha Karma. This form of cleansing has many steps, some of which were too advanced for our capabilities. But the ones were did in our introductory session were a bit unique. I have always been more airy fairy then Alan and when he agreed to try this thing out I have to admit it I was surprised because it was even a bit much for me to wrap my head around. So there we were standing on top of the roof next to the yoga studio chugging 5 glasses of warm salt water at 8 am. As for the next step you had to bring it all back up, like Alan said, “there is nothing like self induced dry heaving first thing in the morning.” After this festive event, we began the cleansing of the nasal passage. This involved tilting our heads to the side, bending over and pouring salt water in one nostril and having it come out the other. I did have a bad cold that day and I must say the next day and even that afternoon I felt much better. It is supposed to work wonders with sinus infections.
We spent Thanksgiving in Pushkar with Alan telling everyone what Thanksgiving was and trying to get them to say “Happy Thanksgiving.” The only thing that reminded us of Thanksgiving on Thursday was the fact that we were very full after our meal. But since there were no other tourists from the US in town we spent it with just the two of us.
Then it was back to Delhi to pick up out passports and get our visas…another almost fiasco. But we got them!!
We even crammed in a day trip down to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and yes it is as wonderful as everyone says. There are a couple funny photos below that may need some explanation. First, we noticed that Indians are very serious in most of their photos. We don't know why but we saw it everywhere. So in the spirit of India we took a stab at our "serious photo" look. Second, we were approached by many locals to take a picture with them. They literally would come running over to have their photo taken with us. However, as their customs prevent them from touching strange women, taking a picture with Mika posed a problem for some. Take a close look at the guy's hand sitting to Mika's left!
Today we are off to Thailand to begin yet another adventure!! There is a lot of unknown in Southeast Asia, this will be the first time we are traveling to an area where neither of us has been.
After spending a month in India we realize that we wished we had more time. We are just beginning to feel we have our bearings but there are several things that I don’t think that we will ever grow accustom to: the flies always landing on our food (but you do get used to finding the random hairs); the art of haggling for everything from a rickshaw ride, to a banana, to your hotel room. When you ask how much something is it always turns into “well it depends… ” here comes yet another story without an answer, or “as you like…” which at first seems great until they do not like your “like”. Another thing Alan and I struggled to understand was the freedom for men and sometimes women to urinate where they see fit, which normally runs along a long reeking wall or if you are riding a train, simply on the tracks. There is nothing like taking an early morning train and looking out your window at all the people having their morning bowl movement on the tracks. This includes the passengers of the train at stops in less populated towns getting off the train to relive themselves instead of using the 2 bathrooms conveniently located in each car. Although in essence I guess it really does not matter because the squat toilets on the trains dump straight onto the tracks anyway.
Then there is the extreme poverty, something that often unknowingly fades into the background and after being here for a month you learn to look away. If you acknowledge it physically, by a turn of the head or a glace of your eyes, you are quickly surrounded and harassed. There are those quiet internal moments though, that tug at your heart strings. Sometimes you are struck with such poignancy, on the verge of tears and you realize what you take for granted. Alan was often my escape in those moments. I would look over at him, so transparent, absorbing it to a similar extreme and I’d giggle in relief at his facial expression thinking thank god I am not experiencing this intense stuff alone. But that is the thing about India, its ability to pull those visceral reactions out of you, make you feel intense blinding emotion and see things with such simplicity for a split second and then just as quickly transport you back to the over stimulation of chaos where your mind jumps from one things to the next struggling to take everything in.
I am leaving India with a many new loves and affections for things like masala chai tea; babies with thick, black eyeliner; learning to live without expectations or an agenda; people, animals and modes of transportation decorated to the nines in colorful fashion; and most of the time replacing frustrations with humor because “This is India”-- a bombardment of the senses and an ever undulating sea of contradictions.
Love, Mika
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