Life Simple

I've been spending a lot of time with a friendly Brazilian called Edwardo, who's been traveling for 8 years. Something that came up was that traveling shows you how simple life actually is. What do we really need to be able to live?

• warmth: clothes and shelter
• nutrition: food and drink
• healthcare
• friendship

Tell me if I've missed something. The traveler's life (as I've so far experienced it) involves planning on going somewhere, buying the ticket, getting there, beating the touts on the way to a hotel, dumping your bags, and then...whatever. Eating, drinking, chatting, reading... it's quite simple, really. When I think about my life in Leeds it was nothing like this. Meeting, work, another meeting, event, more work, meet somebody, go out, sleep, more more more, planning career, earning money, paying bills... It was a lot of fun, but all of that seems so hectic now.

Life is simple. So far, it seems that human life is the same wherever you are. Everybody wants friends, to be healthy, and to have fun, and money to enable things to happen. Gross simplification, but conceding big cultural differences, the basics don't really seem to change.

And so mortages and life insurance and DVDs and too much food and drink and new things and too many cars and faster broadband ETC may be nice, but they are certainly not necessary.

The simple life is good.

Technorati Tags: life travel

Kolkata

Here is a photo of the Golden temple in Amritsa:

And of sunrise on the Ganga:

nice.

Varanasi gave me a headache. It was very poluted, and the locals gave me no spacewhatsoever to chill out and be quiet. So after hiring a boat and rowing myself around for a few hours, I decided it was time to leave. Now, Kolkata. It's a good city so far. It is highly developed, it feels much more like a Western city than anywhere I've been yet. Yesterday I went to a book shop that felt just like Borders. I went to sit in a huge park, and was only bothered by ONE chai wallah in several hours. Great.

I'm sharing a hotel room with a Canadian called Paul, who seems like a nice guy. Tonight it's the birthday of a Brazillian, Edwardo.

However, I feel ill :( Wonder if it's the first return of glandular fever, or if something more tropical and India-related. We'll see. At least I have over a week here to get over whatever it is.

Technorati Tags: photos travel

Thoughts from Varanasi

Wow. My mind is swirling round in a whirl-pool; I'm not sure it's in a fit state to be spilling itself into the blogosphere. I'll give it a go, but will be very brief because the poet of psycho-femi-theo-blogopoet is very low on energy.

• I left the mountains because I had itchy feet. I went to Amritza to see the Sikh Golden Temple. It was spectacular. When I get into a decent internet cafe, I'll upload a photo. What hit me more powerfully, though, was the memorial park. In it, thousands of civilian Indians were shot at by the British soldiers. Hundreds were killed. This masacre was in the name of revolution-quelling. I'm inspired to read a biography of Gandhi. Can anyone recommend one?
  
• Celebrity status. Leaving tourist-infested Dharamsala, I, a white person, quickly became a thing of a rarity. As I head further to the Pakistan border, more and more people shook my hand and asked me how I am, and whether I'm married. By the time I was 2 hours from it, a group of university students had dragged me into their cabin, and were quizzing me and laughing with me and pointing at my eyebrow piercing. They were fascinated. People from the rest of the carriage were crouding round to hear me tell about England and psychology and the rest of my trip. This ego-boosting took a turn for the worse in the Sikh temple. Many people go there as pilgrims, from rural parts of India seldom-visited by Westerners. They were asking for my autograph, getting photographs of me, or just plain staring. I never felt so watched as I ate my chapatti and dahl from the free kitchen. I left a.s.a.p. because it began to overwhelm me. It was getting impossible to spend any time without feeling watched.
  
• 24 hours' train journey (cost about £6) later, I find myself in Varanasi. The Ganga (Ganges) is spectacular. Tomorrow, at sunrise, I hope to get on a boat and see it properly. Photos to follow.
  

I feel that there are multitudinous (I can't believe I just used that word. Bet I spelled it wrong.) streams of stimulation pouring into me. So many lessons being learned, so much to take in. I want to share all in great detail, but for fear of boring and lack of internet cafe time left, will sketch with words:

• POVERTY. I find myself walking along hapily and then suddenly close to tears because of what I see here. I don't need to tell you how poor the working classes of India are. But I will. Painfully poor. What am I doing about this? Will a few rupees bakshish aleviate my consciounce? No.
  
• Being firm. Unlike Tibetan Dharmasala, people try to massively rip me off and will not stop bothering me, unless I am very very firm. Today I actually told somebody to go away because he wouldn't leave me alone. This is new territory.
  
• Community. I am quickly tiring of 2 hour relationships that end when I don't hand over several hundred rupees. If it needed saying, life is hollow without relationships.
  
• Beauty. In the midst of suffering and envy and cheating, there is beauty in the landscape and beauty in the people. One of the only meaningful conversations I had with a local led me to hear how very very poor he was, but how he was happy because of his simple life and family and friends. We have a lot to learn from these people.
  
• Massage on the main ghat. Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
  

Technorati Tags: socialjustice spirituality travel

Triund

I went for a walk up to Triund yesterday, and was greeted by this view:

(click on image to enlarge)

I have got the mountains out of my system now, and am heading off to try and find a coach to Amritza. It's time to do some sight-seeing.

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Koyaanisqatsi and Buddhism

I went to see Baraka two nights ago in McLeod Ganj. The cinema had about 20 seats, a projector and sound system you'd expect to find in a lecture theatre, and cost Rs30 (35p). Very quaint. The film had no dialogue, no speach, just pictures and film documenting people and the world. It was moving. At the end, the guy that ran the place said he'd show Koyaanisqatsi the next night, a film with a similar theme, but with a soundtrack by the great Philip Glass, which I have had the pleasure of experiencing before. I told a few people about it and had five mates to take with me last night.

Koyaanisqatsi is far less Holywood, far less obvious and far more artsy than Baraka. There is flagrant over-use of speeded up and slowed down film, which becomes more and more accentuated until the end, when two of us agreed we just wanted to scream and make it stop. The film did not hand the simple message "we're destroying the world and need to stop" on a platter, but left many open ends and therefore lots to discuss. And discuss we did (over chai, of course).

The film depressed the Dutch nurse so much he had to go home. Three of us chatted for ages, trying to make sense of the loose ends. I thought I'd been impacted by all of this enough to keep me going for a few days until right near the end of the discussion, where we shared how it made us feel. Apart from like we wanted to scream. The two buddhists both said it made them want to go further into the hills and meditate more. It did just the opposite to me. It made me want to live a long life, and change as much as I can about this decaying world. The authors take a postmodern approach to their art, emploring us to create our own meanings, it was saying to me that the world needs to change. Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life; life out of balance; unsustainable life' etc.

Of course we got onto politics. I covered my ears as Richard said we can't change anything. The main buddhist approach to suffering that I've heard of is that suffering is created by incorrect understanding of reality, e.g. belief in the inherent existence of us and things. Although there is (especially from a critical psychologist's point of view) truth here, it seems deeply unsatisfactory to me, if all that is done about suffering is dharma (teaching) and meditation until the wrong views are eliminated, intuitive reality experienced and enlightenment is achieved. What about the unjust structures that operate in the world (most notably from my point of view, capitalism and patriarchy)? I agree that these don't have inherent existence, that is obvious. But they are real forces nonetheless. And they are forces that need challenging.

And here I stumbled upon something that's been niggling with me about buddhism since getting up here into North India, which is very buddhisty. Meditation is a private experience, as is enlightenment. I read a bit in a book that a friend leant me about buddhism, and the opening gambit was "everyone wants to be happy". True, but this seemed to be the core of the book; the rest of it was devoted to developing ways to make this happiness happen, on an individual level only. The writer qualitifed herself by saying 'try to achieve enlighenment for the good of all beings', she repeated that phrase over and over, but it simply glosses over the radically individualised nature of the buddhisms I've so far encountered. If one becomes a buddha and tries to help others become so, there is value, but so much more is needed. The oppressed of the world need us to stand in solidarity and do something practical.

Perhaps I am not doing buddhism justice. I've only briefly learned a bit about a few buddhisms. Please, somebody enlighten me.

I suppose that I would find difficulty subscribing to a philosophy that does not have challenging injustice at its very core, not just a corrolary feature to appease the activists.

And that's why I'm enjoying

so much.

Technorati Tags: art books politics spirituality

The valley where I live

Click on this thumbnail for a view from just about my house:

I'm currently very absorbed in "The Life of Pi" and "She who is: The mystery of God in feminist theological discoures". Both are very very good.

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Peace at last

Nobody's online on MSN! Oh yes, time differences...

I have left the madness of Delhi. After the last blog, I climbed into bed at 9pm, and was awoken at 12:30 the next afternoon by a friendly tout who had tried to sell me a ticket to Manali the previous day. I think I may have slept forever if he hadn't. Feeling a lot better, I had some curry for breakfast (not to be repeated), and found myself a ticket to the hills. It was the bumpiest coach ride ever. Really really bad. But cheap. We arrived in Mcleod Ganj at 6am (that's a 14 hour journey), and having learned in Delhi to give touts a flat 'no', a guy called Richard who's been in India for 4 months told me about a hotel where they have double rooms with hot showers for 150R, and a dorm for 30R. We had to wait outside chatting for hours until they woke up, but finding the dorm empty, we decided to rough it. It's actually nicer than my hotel in Delhi. And it costs 30R. 30R! That's about 40p. The food here is great and cheap, and it's full of Tibetan refugees who've made it their home, so it has a very tibetan feel, and they're friendlier in a much more genuine way than the money grabbing Delhi-ites.

And it's peaceful. Im able to walk the streets without little children tugging at my arms for money, or ruthless conmen who try to trick rich and innocent tourists.

I'm very happy here. There's no pressure to do anything, I've been wandering around drinking lots of chai, and admiring the breathtaking beauty that's here. I was walking down a hill, chatting with Richard (who also used to live in St Ives), and just stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the surrounding mountains and valleys. These are the Himalayers.

Technorati Tags: travel

Arrived

Here is me, from 12,000 miles up as I awoke this morning:



Here is my view:

I've arrived. My visa was for the right India, my passport was in my bag, my money was real.... So I'm here, in a head-spin sort of way. In the arrivals lounge, I met another lone backpacker. And then, another. And we got a taxi together, all bumbling around very very cluelessly, until we arrived in the main backpacker street of New Delhi. We found a hotel straight away, bit of a dive, but at least I get my own room and bathroom. And it only costs 200R, which is about £2.50. Which gets me onto costs. I just had a tasty biryani, with a fanta and a lassi, for £1. This internet cafe is costing 15R an hour, which is about 25p. Someone immediately noticed my broken sandal, and not only stitched it together but reinforced all the places that are likely to break. For 220R. And I felt that that was a rip-off. This is a crazy place.

The worst thing is that we've found many very friendly and helpful people, and later realised that they were fully taking us for a ride, talking rubbish for our rupies. We're learning very quickly not to trust people, which is a sad lesson to learn, but needed, or I will run out of cash before I even get to Singapore.

The roads are several 'lanes' wide, without marking, one big free-for-all with constant horns blarring and utter confusion. I'm glad I'm not driving! I'm sure I'll enjoy it here, but I'm realising that Delhi really wasn't the best place to start a year's backpacking, it's about as hard-core as it gets. I'll have a look in a rough guide, and see if I can find anywhere a bit more peaceful. Maybe, somewhere in the Himalayers.

Bftyphwpblubygrobblersschmelibble.

I will survive.

Pre-travel wobble

In the words of Tumbleweeds,

wobble

I’ve just crashed back home after a splendiferous weekend in Manchester. The comedy store, walks, meals and first class company made it a corker of a break. I got to see some friends who mean an awful lot to me, and had a weekend of zero worries. I read a very interesting book, the Monkey-Bible Book*, which I’ll post something on later, when it’s sunk in.

BUT

Return to planet earth.

• Delhi has just been hit by three terrorist bombings, 60 people killed. In backpacker territory. On Thursday, I’m catching an aeroplane to Delhi. I am a backpacker…
• Post to sort through, airline companies to ring, foreign office websites to check…
• Did I lose my passport when I was in Manchester?
• Have I got the right visas?
• What’s a traveller’s cheque?
• Some people who are very dear to me need to be spoken to before I go.
• Oh dear! I forgot to take my anti-malarials for the week running-up to India.
• Oh dear! I’m at the end of my overdraft. I wasn’t sure this was a major issue, casually mentining my financial situation to my Mum and Dad. Apparently, -£2000 IS an issue. (In addition (subtraction?) to -£12,000 of student loans.) After hearing them out, I’m beginning to agree. I have some money saved up for the forthcoming trip, but I kinda thought I had money things sorted out.

Packing.

I was reading some booklets on mental health today. The words from them that come to mind now are stress and anxiety. I need some SB-205384. I feel like I’m on the verge of something huge, as though life is about to completely change. I feel like something has to go wrong. I really will have lost my passport in Manchester. The flight will have been cancelled. Or I’ll miss it. I’ll get to the airport and they’ll say my tickets are monopoly money. My visa is valid only for the other India that people don’t hear much about. American Express Traveller’s cheques are only valid in America.

I shall reiterate:

wobble.

* Front cover has bible with monkey on top. !