You are full power woman
Ten Fast Facts for Pushkar
Where: Hotel Natural View, Pushkar, Rajasthan, North West india
When: 8 March 05 -> 13 March 05
How: 21-hr train from Varanasi to Jaipur, 4-hr bus from Jaipur to Pushkar
Who: travelling with Julia who i met on the train, also hanging out with some women from Holland and random other travellers who join our table
What: haggling to the death at markets (colourful garments, indian music, multitudes of incense, eclectic second hand books), watching the sunset over the sacred lake to the soundtrack of drumming/jangling/chanting, outdoor yoga, feasting on vegetarian food (in this vegetarian town!), visiting hill-top temples
Why: the peaceful exhale that accompanied every travellers’ reaction to the utterance of its name
Loving: feeling safe to wander the streets at night
Hating: inedibley bad imitation western food (just let it go)
Listening to: my new music Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Prem Joshua, Jagit Singh
Reading: Arundhati Roy’s political essays The Algebra of infinite Justice
On the whole i love travelling alone. i don’t know if i would sacrifice that freedom and opportunity for the comfort and ease of travelling with someone else. But india in particular is harder alone, much harder than south-east asia. Safety is just such a huge issue that i keep myself in a state of constant low-level paranoia (not good for my mental health i’m sure). i don’t like having to be wary of everyone and everything, being curfewed at dark, living with the reality that a contingent of this population despises westerners (and acts this out – just this week in Varanasi a tourist was raped and murdered on the Ganges, and a bomb went off on the main ghat killing 10 people). its not as chilled as its made out to be – the poverty and the religious separatism seethes hostility.
So yes, it is definitely possible to do alone – but why? What am i trying to prove and to whom? i am independent and strong and resourceful – i don’t need india to affirm these things for me. The experience of india is richer, fuller and easier in the company of other travellers. And falling into travelling with other people seems to happen much more easily in india. i haven’t spent one day completely alone here.
i met an English woman on the train from Varanasi to Agra and decided to continue on the train with her to Pushkar, so not get off where i had planned. in order to do this i had to quickly consult with five train officials while the train was stationary on the platform. Welcome to india’s legendary bureaucratic processes. First the tourist assistance guy told me to go to normal assistance guy, then the normal assistance guy told me to go to the ticket master’s office guy, the ticket master’s office guy told me to go queue at reservations (when i pleaded that there was no time, he walked me into the back of reservations and i got a ticket but he insisted i could only buy general (standing) class), he told me to upgrade this ticket i needed to see the ticket inspector guy, so i found the ticket inspector guy and had to pay the upgrade price plus a fee to the inspector for the service! i finally got back on the train with a minute to spare!!!!!
i am staying a little out of town at a guesthouse with a garden that pulses with life. This morning i did yoga on the rooftop, with a 360 degree view of the town, surrounded on the perimeter by cows, donkeys, horses, pigs, monkeys, dogs, squirrels, crows. i may stay and do an Ayurvedic yoga course. Apart from Sikkim, this is the most relaxed i’ve felt in india.
Tags: India
Jyai
March 13th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Hi Jyai
Glad to see that you are okay. Didn’t you go to Agra and the Taj Mahal???
Will you be going to Delhi? I sent you the contact numbers for my friends and they are looking forward to meeting you.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Love
Dianne