My time in India

If I was to write an Eat, Pray, Love knock off - I would set it all in India. It was my “eat” with the most delicious curries and naans. It was my “pray” with religion totally and utterly in your face, and while I wasn’t a participant, it is almost impossible to go to India without feeling something close to spirituality. And it was my “love”. In India I saw some of the most distressing scenes. A dog with its eye freshly gouged out snapping at flies who were trying to invade. A man riddled with leprosy begging on the street and when we gave him money, he dropped it onto the road and tried to scoop it up with his barely there limb, scrapping it along the asphalt. These scenes are not what will stay with me,  but what will, is the kindness that was seen daily. A common sight was waiters handing out drinks to kids on the streets or giving left over food to stray dogs or cows. Food was shared with everyone on the train, and often people gave what they could to the homeless. It was this generosity that moved me to tears and made me love India. A country that I want to go back to.

Here are my top 10 experiences:

1. Riding a boat from Elephanta Island to Mumbai.

On the island there are caves with carvings of Hindu gods, mainly Shiva, which date back over a millennium. It is a UNESCO world heritage site but the island is covered with rubbish. If the tide is out, then the rubbish will be the first thing you see on the shoreline, and while the caves are immaculate, if you walk around the island there is an alarming amount of discarded bottles and packaging. Distress set in and I felt helpless. What could I do? So anyway, these thoughts were swirling around in my mind as we boarded the boat back to Mumbai.

Two women with children boarded so Nick and I offered them our seats. This provoked another Indian family to insist that we sit with them. They shared their delicious fudge with us, and plonked their giggling toddler on my lap. His smile was infectious. Mixed emotions of helplessness and gratitude filled me and I didn‘t know quite what to do with myself. After my distress on the island, this seemed like the most beautiful thing. This would often happen to me in India, just when I was on the brink of despair, something wonderful would happen and then everything didn‘t seem quite so bad.

2. Climbing a treehouse in Goa

Presented before me was a treehouse around 10 meters high, with a rickety ladder to ascend. To get to this point we had walked for about two hours into the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary, with a Brit and a Swede. About halfway up the wobbly ladder, I started hyperventilating. I realised that if I put one foot wrong, then I would most likely be a) permanently paralysed or b) dead - both not ideal outcomes. It was only because I had two people behind me who I barely knew that I kept putting one foot cautiously in front of the other. Had it been only Nick with me, I think I might have had a full blown panic attack. But it seemed peer pressure, and not looking like a wimp, was a stronger force than the thought of splattering all over the ground.

3. Training it in India

We spent roughly 72 hours on trains in India, three full days. I can tell you this because Nick keeps, oh about 10 spreadsheets on the go, detailing everything from our spending habits, to time spent on different modes of transport, to things he wants to continue when he gets home. Bless him.

There a range of different class carriages you can take in India, but the most fun, we found, was Sleeper Class. It is the second to lowest class, has no air conditioning and bars covering the open aired windows that don‘t really shut. There is about 70 beds per carriage stacked three high, and although the conditions were less than ideal, the people more than made up for it. We found that the people around us adopted us and feed us copious amounts of delicious and interesting looking food. We didn’t find this generosity in any other class of train that we took. Be careful though, there are warnings about accepting food from strangers because there have been drugging reported. However the soldiers delivering this message were scoffing a hand full of peanuts that a passenger had offered them while laughing at us doing the same.

4. Witnessing the Taj.

It truly is beautiful. It’s amazing that with all our modern technology, something built in the 1600s can inspire so much awe. Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, wanted to create a space so that his deceased and favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, could rest in “heaven on earth”. The mausoleum and its surrounds took 22 years to complete and now around 3 million people come and visit it each year.

5. The holy city of Varanasi.

It is like no other experience. Hundreds of people get cremated here daily, with their ashes scattered into the holy Ganges River. The reason behind this is a Hindu belief that if you die and get cremated here, you can leave the ongoing process of reincarnation and go to heaven. Death here is celebrated with singing and dancing. I have never been in a place where the living and the dead are smashed together in such harmony. A lot of Hindus travel here to get married, so alongside the cremation ghats (steps leading into the river) are wedding ceremonies, as well as washing ghats, buffalo bathing ghats, and people just going about their regular everyday life.

I thought seeing a corpse burning was going to be a gruesome sight, but it wasn’t at all. The bodies are burned in sandal wood so the smell is actually rather pleasant. Crying is against the rules because it can mess with the sprit so the whole affair is quite business like. It’s quite normal to see a dead body being carried down the street with a parade of people singing and chanting while you are eating your lunch.

6. Discovering the Thali

Now, for lunch, you must try a Thali. It’s sort of like Indian tapas. You get between four and eight small portions for the same price as one curry. They usually include a dhal, a curry, roti or naan, rice, mango chutney, curd, and sometimes salad. Nick and I pretty much lived on these, and they’re usually big enough to share.

7. Lassies in Varanasi.

If you go to Varanasi, then you must go the Blue Lassi Shop. Apparently, and I don’t know how much truth there is to this, it is home to the original curd based drink, the lassi, which is combined with a range of spices, fruits and a hell of a lot of sugar. Here, they grind all the ingredients by hand, so it’s nice and chunky and serve it in terracotta cups made by local villagers.

8. Relaxing on Palolem beach.

It was very hard to leave this amazing place. While there are lots of tourists there, it still has a very relaxed feel. It’s not as developed as other places in Goa, and instead of resorts, there are beach shacks among the palm trees. It’s located in the south and is trance music free - unlike the north of Goa where it’s difficult to find a place to eat breakfast without feeling like you should be on  hard drugs.

9. New Zealand won the cricket against India.

This kind of never happens, because India are the cricket gods, but it did while we were in Goa. We were watching it at our favourite restaurant  in Palolem when we won the one day series matches. I usually hate cricket, but when you are in a country that adores it, and your nation has just beaten the cricket maestros, it was a good feeling but with a tinge of guilt.



10. A hot cup of Chai.

Oh how I will miss masala chai. It is tea mixed with milk, sugar and masala spice. The quantities and variations of the recipes are often secret from vendor to vendor, or family to family, making each cup unique. It was a shock to get to Europe (our next destination) and see no Chaiwallas, or hardly any street vendors, and while it was nice not to be harassed to buy something, I also missed the deep call of a Chaiwalla to come and enjoy a tea, something we hardly ever passed up.