miércoles, 21 de septiembre de 2016

INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON (IV)

New Delhi's fog, or why haven't you tried couchsurfing yet.

Dawn in New Delhi. The plane arrived with more than two hours of delay. I didn't know the local time, so I couldn't calculate how late I was. It was 6 am. in India; 2:30. I was tired, a bit of jet lag. I still felt confident. “Everything was gonna be alright.”

I could have done like some students from the ashram: spent some hours of layover in New Delhi and take another plane to Indore; then asked for someone to pick me up in the airport and get to the ashram safe and sound. But then... what could I write about today?

The district looked darker than I expected for the capital of the country with the highest population density in the world.
Airports are usually outside of the city. It is okay if you don't see so many lights.” I thought.
But the truth was that, at that time, whatever I expected was far from what I was heading to.


New Delhi airport is pretty cool. Everyone takes the same photo of the huge mudras above the passport queue. Nice temperature, not so many people, quite European indeed. I had already forgotten that was 6 am. I crossed the check desk, got a beautiful stamp in my visa and remained calmed about the couch-surfer that was going to pick me up. I wasn't realizing how much I was depending on him. Thanks again, Jitinder.

I went to the baggage belt and waited patiently. It is always the same feeling: your luggage is not gonna appear, your luggage is always one of the last ones, your luggage is lost. Always this feeling until your luggage appear, or until you realize that all the people from your flight are gonna and your luggage is actually in Moscow. Anyhow, my travel just had begun, why should I piss off that soon?

Still calm, I gave my data to the airport worker and helped a Spanish couple that was in the same situation.

Well, it will come soon” I thought. Nothing else to do in the airport. Drink a little bit more of water from that tap that says “Drinkable water” and crossed the door looking for my savior.

----
I will add a small note encouraging Couchsurfing here. (If you don't know what is Couchsurfing, click here.) Couchsurfing has been my savior. I didn't published my chronicles from my trip to Morocco, but there was one factor that made the trip an unforgettable experience: Couchsurfing. Thanks to Couchsurfing, I have discovered that the people living in developing countries are way nicer and hospitable than those who lived in developed ones. My experience is mostly limited to Morocco and India for the former, and Europe for the latter. In both countries, I have cried from gratitude, I have cried from unfairness, and I have awed at the hospitality and kindness of their people. Couchsurfing opens a whole new world about what traveling means. Being with locals made trips safer, cheaper and purer. I have to admit that most of what I know about India is thanks to what couchsurfers have taught me. I have been in their homes, eaten their food, slept in their beds, wore their clothes, been transported in their motorbikes and cars, and been loved by their hearts. I cannot put my gratitude into words.



In India it is said that The guest is God” (Atithi Devo Bhava), and I can assure Indians treat you like if you were. Even when knowing that you are not more than a foreigner. In Morocoo, Islam teaches something similar. I witnessed it when I was bathed in a hammam by a friend I had met the day before. Remember the last time you bath someone, or someone bath you.

If you keep on reading, I will reveal another anecdote that makes justice about these lovely culture. A story that should make us realize how wonderful can be a human being grown up in the right context. Or how despicable he can become.

So, please, don't do it for you, but do it for the world: open a Couchsurfing account (clicking here) and use it. As a host or as a guest, but use it as much as possible, and break all your misconceptions about what human being means.
----

Suddenly, I realized the amount of artificial comfort that the air conditioning was creating. A humid wave of heat hit my face and my body instantly. The airport had been a quite aseptic experience. I was in India. Actually, It was the first time in my life that I was in India, in Asia. And I only only had a small backpack with less than some basic stuff. Thanks to the help of the airport worker, I could have called Jitinder that was getting to his third hour of waiting in the airport. He and his brother had actually saved me. But I didn't know it yet.

We got into the car. The steering wheel was at the right. A gift from the British, I thought. Better to look a cool and experienced travel and don't comment it. Somehow, none in the car strapped ourselves in, but anyone paid the least attention to the detail.

I was starting to freaking out with the streets. Jitinder was telling me that it was 5 a.m. And there weren't people in the street. But I saw them. I saw people sleeping on the streets, sleeping on the rickshaws, pushing carts full of fruits, walking in the highway, driving cars and motorbikes. I kept on recording, making clear that I was a complete tourist.


-Everything is so different. I repeated amazed.
-This is nothing. You will see it today in New Delhi

Half demolished old buildings. Or maybe new ones that were left unfinished. Cows in the roads. Mountains of garbage. Nonexistent sidewalks. Half paved roads. All of it smothered by the bluish dust of a dawn in New Delhi. A dust cloud that wants to become a London fog, but it cannot. New Delhi's fog it's not composed by condensed water, mystery stories, and economist yawns. New Delhi's' fog is made out of dirt, pollution and dry hopes. A dust cloud of 17 million people, one third of the population of Spain. A district of 11 thousand people per square meter, twice the population density of Madrid.



And it is still funny that I was excited, amused and thinking that everything was gonna be okay. 

lunes, 12 de septiembre de 2016

INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON (III)

BECOMING REAL
or
SELF-DECEPTION 

I spent my hours in the plane reading about the history and culture of India. But I miss a fundamental part of the guidebook that could have saved me from a life lesson in my first day in Delhi... Anyhow, there is something that guidebooks cannot capture clearly enough: the cultural shock.

I have some pages in my notebook whilst I was few hours before my destination. They reflect part of the anxiety and fear of regarding myself as a solo traveler and a, probably, solo human being. I had some flashbacks from these summer camps for kids. The first days, I used to question what was my parents' purpose for leaving me alone surrounded of unfamiliar people. Nevertheless, all those camps ended with waterfalls of tears caused by the separation of what it had been a fifteen days, friendship, a fifteen days connection, fifteen days of love and fun. Next time one of us witness the tenderness of a salty drop sliding through a seven year old cheek, combined by the unnatural tension of a face distorted by sadness and pain, and wrapped by the groans and hiccup of loss, think twice about the amount of future that is being conditioned by a precise moment.


I also reflect about the way I was going out of my comfort zone with the simple fact of having a dinner in the plane. The last time something similar happened was when I went to New York in 2013 with my flatmate. But this time, I had taken an eight hours flight and I was having dinner by own. Tiny details that mean huge changes. Then, after convincing myself that I should look tougher and don't let myself get drown by self-destructive thoughts, I stared through the window and get awed by the deepens of the darkness that surrounds spaceships at night.

sábado, 10 de septiembre de 2016

INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON (II)

HOW EVERYTHING STARTED?
Or
NO ONE IS READY TO BE BORN

I actually feel like putting dates into this. I think it will help understanding the whole situation a bit better.

At the beginning of July, I didn't have any clear plan about what to do during the summer. I just had come back from probably the most unexpected and funny week of the year. I had been in a European project in France led by one of the worst organizers I have ever known, President Ignace. We are still waiting for the money. Anyhow, among some of my possibilities, I wanted to do a meditation retreat, a yoga training or something like this, just in order to have a fruitful summer and don't get stuck in Valladolid.

During the second week of July, I was searching different yoga teacher trainings. Then, I found that a Spanish training cost almost 2,000 € while some courses in India cost 800€. Then, I took a decision. Why spending such a big amount of money in Spain when, for a similar price, I can get flight tickets to India and make the course there? Numbers don't lie.

Then, I realized that my passport was expired and that I didn't have any of the requirements needed for such a trip regarding hygienic, medical, or basic knowledge about the country. Nevertheless, I was lucky I had prepared a trip to India two years ago that it couldn't get accomplished. I made some calls and got a clear perspective of what I needed.


jueves, 8 de septiembre de 2016

INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON (I)

INDIA IN THE FIRST PERSON


In this compilation of text, I am gonna share my travel through India during these months of July, August, and September (2016). This is just my first experience of the trip. I hope you like it as an entertainment or as a source of some knowledge or advice. I will write this in English in order to have the possibility of reaching a higher number of people and to stop promoting the laziness of Spanish speakers towards this language.



RE-ADAPTING TO MADNESS

I arrived yesterday and one of the first things I did was drinking from the shower-head. There are still some things that I haven't gotten completely use to. These old habits and patterns that somehow have been transformed into survival skills. Even, drinking from the tap is now something I am still scared of doing it. Going to the toilet and sitting in a toilet bowl instead of squatting, using toilet paper instead of water and my left hand, I could even say that I don't feel clean anymore by using only toilet paper...

I was looking for an experience that could change my perspectives about life, and I think I have found it. But what I didn't expect is that it could change them in such a mundane and profound level at the same time. But I guess that the mundane is, at the end, the deepest thing we can have.