How strange is it, for me to feel so different, when being around other travellers? As I sat at the table, I heard a voice inside my head asking: what are you doing, sitting here with people? By trying to avoid Indian sleazy men, I was now attracting English and Irish tourists. But I was also wanting to avoid them! I woke up the next morning, and it felt like “the morning after the night before”. I felt I was going against things that I had started to value.
So what is it I want? Do I want tourists around me or Indians? Or do I want neither? When travelling alone, company can be very welcome because you can get too much inside your own head. This fact doesn’t make me a loser, it doesn’t make me a failure, it just means I’m only human. Hanging out with tourists doesn’t mean I have to befriend them if I don’t want to. But I can simply appreciate and hold that company for as long as I wish. That’s the beauty of travelling alone; having the freedom to leave the dinner table, the guesthouse or even the resort, as soon as the urge comes. Then when I realize it’s not the company I’ve been used to over the past months, I don’t have to stress out about the temptation of what that company presents me with: alcohol and partying.
I know what’s happening: for so many months I’ve been around mainly Indian people. Day-in day-out, they were the only people I’d have face to face contact with. This is what I wanted and it’s what I was getting, even though at times it’s been difficult, frustrating and has made me also feel at a loss and even isolated. The company I’ve been used to, hasn’t been smoking, drinking or cursing. They may sound like saints, but of course that’s not true. They can be just as rude, ignorant and unmannerly as anybody else, and many times even more so than the “standard western person”, but for religious reasons alcohol and cursing would be almost unknown to many.
Wednesday night I felt like I was being taken away from India and I was losing sight of all that I had learnt and began to appreciate more in life. With Byron and Patsy, yes they are also English, but it was totally different. I had a connection with them. I appreciated the conversations we had and I didn’t feel judged for not drinking alcohol. Yesterday and today I actually started longing to be with all the native friends I’ve made, since first arriving in India. I needed to get that connection back.
I’ve realized I see India as something other than the latest Lanzarote or Crete, which is what others may choose to see it as. I see it as a place where I can learn to value other things in life, rather than boozing and partying. It’s a short period in my life where I can live a different lifestyle and where I learn different things. I felt I was undoing all I had done and that’s why I may have overreacted when I was suddenly faced with holding company I haven’t held for quite some time. It doesn’t mean I’ll never party again or never enjoy some drinks. Just at this moment in time, it’s not something I can appreciate or value. It’s not what I came to India or Varkala for. And that’s fine for me to realize! There’s no shame in in doing what I want and not getting distracted and being “misled”. I came here to do as I please and that’s exactly what I did. And it led me to have the most memorable walk along the beach!!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tourist-shock.. 1
When you’re in a tourist hotspot it can hard to avoid those for who the hotspot was developed: tourists. Western tourists. I chose a guesthouse on the basis of me not being surrounded by tourists. I didn’t want to be distracted, I didn’t want to get “sucked-in” to that scene. I came here to have some peace and quiet and some me-time. Varkala beach is divided into 2 areas, one for the Western tourists, which is busier, cheaper and has café’s, bars, restaurants and shops galore. The other part, which is where I am, is mainly for either elderly tourists or Indian tourists. It’s a little bit more expensive, it’s quieter and there are only a few restaurants and hardly any shops.
Even though I’m not near the busy area, I was drawn to it over the past few days. Mainly because I was trying to avoid certain Indian men who were making advances, in the only eating place near my guesthouse. So to avoid that confrontation, interference and awkwardness, I was hanging out in the touristy area and have been with people I was initially trying to avoid: Wednesday night I found myself sitting, for the first time in ages, with a group of English and Irish youngsters. It almost frustrated me to have attracted a situation I was wanting to avoid. The main reason was actually because I was confronted with something I haven’t been wanting to do since coming to India and that’s to party and to drink. I‘ve only had 1 glass of wine on my birthday which I couldn’t finish. Since then I haven’t wanted alcohol, nor have I been around people who have been drinking, except for Byron and Patsy last weekend.
Many people who travel in India say they automatically stop drinking because there isn‘t much of it around. In the towns there aren’t really any bars and I haven’t noticed any liquor stores either. It’s not a big part of life here. I unintentionally stopped drinking. It wasn’t a plan of mine, it just happened. But then what happens is, that travellers find themselves suddenly surrounded by their “own” people and get sucked-in to the drinking scene again. It can be a bit of an alien feeling and you ask yourself: what to do? Continue to be alcohol-free or go with the crowd? Wednesday I couldn’t resist agreeing to have dinner with these guys. They were lovely people but I soon felt that it wasn’t what I’m here for! I almost felt guilty for agreeing to go along and I was then feeling like bore for not drinking. But soon I copped-on; I wasn’t going to have a drink just to fit in. I didn’t want anything other than a juice. I didn’t care what they thought of me, because I didn’t even know these people. When they asked me to come to a bar, after dinner, I said no to that too! Was it because I wasn’t drinking or was it because I wasn’t having a great time and felt that all they were doing and “dribbling non-sense” and I was simply sick of listening to it? Maybe it was all of these reasons. So I decided to call it a night. I’d had enough. I thanked them and set on my way back to the other end of the beach.
I had to walk back along the beach at 11pm by myself. It was a 15min walk. I was a little wary about it, because I’ve heard a few stories about what has happened to tourists in these places. But it actually was the nicest walk ever! While they were sat in the pub, I was having a mid-night stroll. It was a full moon so the beach was lit up and it was almost like daylight. There was nobody around, except for 2 lost souls I could see far off in the distance. It was so warm and all the natives who, in the daytime, would be sitting around filling their hours with doing nothing except for drinking tea, eating fried food and watching the people coming and going, were all either curled up somewhere on a hard bench or a wooden bed or a stone pavement. And there was little old me, seeing this beautiful place by night, all on my own; walking along a beach in the South of India, by night, with only the sound of the waves in the background and the moon guiding me back to the guesthouse, safe and sound. It was so nice! For that walk alone, I’m happy to have gone for dinner with these Irish and English travellers, because I otherwise I would have missed out! Amazing.
More to come.. ;)
Even though I’m not near the busy area, I was drawn to it over the past few days. Mainly because I was trying to avoid certain Indian men who were making advances, in the only eating place near my guesthouse. So to avoid that confrontation, interference and awkwardness, I was hanging out in the touristy area and have been with people I was initially trying to avoid: Wednesday night I found myself sitting, for the first time in ages, with a group of English and Irish youngsters. It almost frustrated me to have attracted a situation I was wanting to avoid. The main reason was actually because I was confronted with something I haven’t been wanting to do since coming to India and that’s to party and to drink. I‘ve only had 1 glass of wine on my birthday which I couldn’t finish. Since then I haven’t wanted alcohol, nor have I been around people who have been drinking, except for Byron and Patsy last weekend.
Many people who travel in India say they automatically stop drinking because there isn‘t much of it around. In the towns there aren’t really any bars and I haven’t noticed any liquor stores either. It’s not a big part of life here. I unintentionally stopped drinking. It wasn’t a plan of mine, it just happened. But then what happens is, that travellers find themselves suddenly surrounded by their “own” people and get sucked-in to the drinking scene again. It can be a bit of an alien feeling and you ask yourself: what to do? Continue to be alcohol-free or go with the crowd? Wednesday I couldn’t resist agreeing to have dinner with these guys. They were lovely people but I soon felt that it wasn’t what I’m here for! I almost felt guilty for agreeing to go along and I was then feeling like bore for not drinking. But soon I copped-on; I wasn’t going to have a drink just to fit in. I didn’t want anything other than a juice. I didn’t care what they thought of me, because I didn’t even know these people. When they asked me to come to a bar, after dinner, I said no to that too! Was it because I wasn’t drinking or was it because I wasn’t having a great time and felt that all they were doing and “dribbling non-sense” and I was simply sick of listening to it? Maybe it was all of these reasons. So I decided to call it a night. I’d had enough. I thanked them and set on my way back to the other end of the beach.
I had to walk back along the beach at 11pm by myself. It was a 15min walk. I was a little wary about it, because I’ve heard a few stories about what has happened to tourists in these places. But it actually was the nicest walk ever! While they were sat in the pub, I was having a mid-night stroll. It was a full moon so the beach was lit up and it was almost like daylight. There was nobody around, except for 2 lost souls I could see far off in the distance. It was so warm and all the natives who, in the daytime, would be sitting around filling their hours with doing nothing except for drinking tea, eating fried food and watching the people coming and going, were all either curled up somewhere on a hard bench or a wooden bed or a stone pavement. And there was little old me, seeing this beautiful place by night, all on my own; walking along a beach in the South of India, by night, with only the sound of the waves in the background and the moon guiding me back to the guesthouse, safe and sound. It was so nice! For that walk alone, I’m happy to have gone for dinner with these Irish and English travellers, because I otherwise I would have missed out! Amazing.
More to come.. ;)
An air-conditioned mind!
An incident on the train: travelling AC, for the first time in India. What an ordeal I made of this. It was ridiculous on my behalf.
I’ll explain: In India, there are so many different classes you can travel on. Me being me, I have always gone with the cheapest class, which is non-ac ( without air conditioning). It’s basically an overloaded carriage, that stinks, that’s hot, that’s male-dominated and can at times feel to be an intimidating environment for women travelling alone. But I would never even consider spending “so much” (on Indian terms) on a seat just so I can sit down and travel in comfort, for a “short 3-hour train journey”. Never. For a number of reasons I wouldn’t consider this. What I could do with for the same amount of money is endless: feed myself for 2 days or book a room for a night or work on the internet for 10 hours in an internet café! That’s the money -side of it, then there’s the other side of it; which is, even if I have the money, how could I feel fine to think of deserving to travel in style? Just because I’m not native? Just because I was earning my wages in dollars, before coming here?
It felt so wrong, at the weekend, to be travelling in a higher class than I usually would be travelling. I actually got into such a mess in my head because of it and wondered: why me and not them? I should be “back there” amongst the heat, the chaos, the smell. But I wasn’t. Why couldn’t I enjoy it and be happy to have such an easy train journey? Why couldn’t I appreciate the fact that Byron and Patsy were offering me something so generous? I couldn’t believe how much “stuff” it brought up for me.
Afterwards, we spoke briefly about it. All I could say on the matter was: why me in an ac-carriage, and not them? Then Byron said something ever so interesting. He said to never let your standards drop, even though you may be surrounded by standards which are far lower than what you have been brought up with. And it’s actually an issue I have been faced with on several different occasions in India.
For instance, when I was in the hostel I felt, the longer I was there, the more I was starting to care less about hygiene. I could see that I was slowly starting to feel fine to wash my clothes in a dirty bucket and to walk on a floor barefoot that hadn’t been cleaned and to eat my rice with a hand that I hadn’t had the chance to wash properly. I could see I was slowly caring less that my roommate would go to the toilet and leave traces on the toilet seat and to smell a smell of sweat in our room from which I had no clue of the source. All these things: I had to see them as normal, only so I could feel comfortable there in the hostel. I had no choice. How else would I have gotten through those weeks feeling all the amazement I was feeling? It wouldn’t have been possible, had I not adjusted and accepted THEIR hygiene standards. So I did.
But now I’ve come to realize how important it can be not to FORGET your own standards, even though you may need to temporarily ADJUST them. This is not only regarding hygiene, but the general standard of living. There’s a difference between forgetting and adjusting and maybe that’s where I got caught “off-guard”. A person can simply adjust their standards, because they have little choice in the matter and otherwise would be “deprived” of the rest of the beauty a certain experience can be giving them. This is what I did in the hostel. A person can however forget that they were raised with certain standards of living and general hygiene and become totally “one” with the world around them and feel they deserve the lowest of the lowest because they find themselves in a world that happens to contain a standard of living that confirms a particular travellers belief that in order to have a positive influence on those less fortunate they also must lower themselves to that level. This is SOOOO not the case! It’s not was I was doing, but it’s what I may thought to have been necessary. How interesting to see this so clearly!
I now see that a person can see themselves as being the same as the other person, regardless of their ”wealth”, their upbringing, their religion, their standard of living. I ask myself: How can an outsider find a balance between the world from which they come and the world in which they have chosen to place themselves? Well, nothing is ever black and white but if a person from a different country can see themselves as being blessed to have their roots in their home country that has wealth and therefore puts that person in a position to travel and make a difference, if that’s what they want to do in life, then standards need not slip but flexibility should be owned. Their land of origin gives them the opportunity to spread whatever it is they want to spread. The wealth only gives options and opens up the world in whatever way that person may want it to open-up. It doesn’t make them snobs, it doesn’t make them feel to be any better than others. It doesn’t define who they are.
Native Indians, most of them, will disagree with this last statement, I reckon. But that’s because they may not have those opportunities or the wealth and envy may play a role. I would like to add though, that most people say India is a 3rd world country, and in parts it is, but there IS money and wealth here, especially in the cities; it’s just the size of the population and the contrasts within the 1 billion different people that cover Indian soil, which make it nearly impossible for the money and wealth that is in the country, to be divided equally.
So I need not feel guilty for sitting in an AC-carriage, I need not feel like a snob for wanting toilet paper when I go to the toilet (something they don’t use in India!! Water is all they need..!!). On the other hand: I need not feel like a pig for eating the Indian traditional way (which is with the hands) and I need not feel disgusting when the heat makes me sweat so much. This is me adjusting my standards but also keeping my own standards in place. I also realize: yes, we are all one, we are all the same.. But we cannot feel guilty for our roots and for the opportunities our place of origin gives us: balance in the world is something that is always needed and realizing this doesn’t make us heartless or snobs, it just makes us even more aware of the options we have and the gratitude we can choose to feel for this.
I’ll explain: In India, there are so many different classes you can travel on. Me being me, I have always gone with the cheapest class, which is non-ac ( without air conditioning). It’s basically an overloaded carriage, that stinks, that’s hot, that’s male-dominated and can at times feel to be an intimidating environment for women travelling alone. But I would never even consider spending “so much” (on Indian terms) on a seat just so I can sit down and travel in comfort, for a “short 3-hour train journey”. Never. For a number of reasons I wouldn’t consider this. What I could do with for the same amount of money is endless: feed myself for 2 days or book a room for a night or work on the internet for 10 hours in an internet café! That’s the money -side of it, then there’s the other side of it; which is, even if I have the money, how could I feel fine to think of deserving to travel in style? Just because I’m not native? Just because I was earning my wages in dollars, before coming here?
It felt so wrong, at the weekend, to be travelling in a higher class than I usually would be travelling. I actually got into such a mess in my head because of it and wondered: why me and not them? I should be “back there” amongst the heat, the chaos, the smell. But I wasn’t. Why couldn’t I enjoy it and be happy to have such an easy train journey? Why couldn’t I appreciate the fact that Byron and Patsy were offering me something so generous? I couldn’t believe how much “stuff” it brought up for me.
Afterwards, we spoke briefly about it. All I could say on the matter was: why me in an ac-carriage, and not them? Then Byron said something ever so interesting. He said to never let your standards drop, even though you may be surrounded by standards which are far lower than what you have been brought up with. And it’s actually an issue I have been faced with on several different occasions in India.
For instance, when I was in the hostel I felt, the longer I was there, the more I was starting to care less about hygiene. I could see that I was slowly starting to feel fine to wash my clothes in a dirty bucket and to walk on a floor barefoot that hadn’t been cleaned and to eat my rice with a hand that I hadn’t had the chance to wash properly. I could see I was slowly caring less that my roommate would go to the toilet and leave traces on the toilet seat and to smell a smell of sweat in our room from which I had no clue of the source. All these things: I had to see them as normal, only so I could feel comfortable there in the hostel. I had no choice. How else would I have gotten through those weeks feeling all the amazement I was feeling? It wouldn’t have been possible, had I not adjusted and accepted THEIR hygiene standards. So I did.
But now I’ve come to realize how important it can be not to FORGET your own standards, even though you may need to temporarily ADJUST them. This is not only regarding hygiene, but the general standard of living. There’s a difference between forgetting and adjusting and maybe that’s where I got caught “off-guard”. A person can simply adjust their standards, because they have little choice in the matter and otherwise would be “deprived” of the rest of the beauty a certain experience can be giving them. This is what I did in the hostel. A person can however forget that they were raised with certain standards of living and general hygiene and become totally “one” with the world around them and feel they deserve the lowest of the lowest because they find themselves in a world that happens to contain a standard of living that confirms a particular travellers belief that in order to have a positive influence on those less fortunate they also must lower themselves to that level. This is SOOOO not the case! It’s not was I was doing, but it’s what I may thought to have been necessary. How interesting to see this so clearly!
I now see that a person can see themselves as being the same as the other person, regardless of their ”wealth”, their upbringing, their religion, their standard of living. I ask myself: How can an outsider find a balance between the world from which they come and the world in which they have chosen to place themselves? Well, nothing is ever black and white but if a person from a different country can see themselves as being blessed to have their roots in their home country that has wealth and therefore puts that person in a position to travel and make a difference, if that’s what they want to do in life, then standards need not slip but flexibility should be owned. Their land of origin gives them the opportunity to spread whatever it is they want to spread. The wealth only gives options and opens up the world in whatever way that person may want it to open-up. It doesn’t make them snobs, it doesn’t make them feel to be any better than others. It doesn’t define who they are.
Native Indians, most of them, will disagree with this last statement, I reckon. But that’s because they may not have those opportunities or the wealth and envy may play a role. I would like to add though, that most people say India is a 3rd world country, and in parts it is, but there IS money and wealth here, especially in the cities; it’s just the size of the population and the contrasts within the 1 billion different people that cover Indian soil, which make it nearly impossible for the money and wealth that is in the country, to be divided equally.
So I need not feel guilty for sitting in an AC-carriage, I need not feel like a snob for wanting toilet paper when I go to the toilet (something they don’t use in India!! Water is all they need..!!). On the other hand: I need not feel like a pig for eating the Indian traditional way (which is with the hands) and I need not feel disgusting when the heat makes me sweat so much. This is me adjusting my standards but also keeping my own standards in place. I also realize: yes, we are all one, we are all the same.. But we cannot feel guilty for our roots and for the opportunities our place of origin gives us: balance in the world is something that is always needed and realizing this doesn’t make us heartless or snobs, it just makes us even more aware of the options we have and the gratitude we can choose to feel for this.
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