On the Road with Julie

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3.5 days in India is not enough.

And it was too much at the same time. 

Of course 3.5 days is not enough because India is a massive country with so much to be experienced. With 22 different languages in their constitution, which doesn’t account for the over a hundred distinct and living major languages that reside there, India is a place bursting with colors on every level. Of course, that doesn’t include the 19,000+ dialects spoken over the expanse of its many miles. Not to mention the rich culture, history and spirit of India and its people. No. 3.5 days is not nearly enough.

But, it’s more than that. 3.5 days is not enough because there is also so much to navigate and so much to acclimate to just to be able to plug into what India has to offer.

It is not like visiting Istanbul or Vienna or Granada or Rome. Of course 3 days in any of those places is not enough either – not enough to taste everything they have to offer, not enough to become deeply in tune and part of these places. Of course it isn’t. But it is enough to drop in and plug in quickly, whether into the food, the transportation, the art or the history and just take in as much as you can physically cram into the time in any of those more approachable (for a solo traveling female American) cities.

In Delhi, India, 3.5 days is not just not enough because of what India has to offer, but because of what India asks of you in return, especially a rookie visitor like me.

In India, you have to reserve mental space and energy to remember what not to eat, what not to drink, where not to go. The monkeys are so out of this world adorable and amazing to witness.

But, you also have to remember, don’t get too close. You can saunter on by them, but don’t make eye contact. Your tour guide might say, as you stroll alongside a particularly adorable primate, “I’m not sure if that is a relaxed stance or an aggressive stance.”

Huh? Those are the two options? Super chill or ready to tear your face off? That’s a pretty big swing. And a pretty big swing is exactly what I’d like to avoid. That pretty much sums it up. You can relax and enjoy, but also be prepared to get your eyes scratched out….maybe…probably not…actually, you should be fine.

So, there was a low grade feeling of “pay attention”, “don’t let your guard down for a moment” that was with me all of the time during my 3.5 days there. You have to do that anywhere, but not at the level I found myself needing to do it there. And, if your vigilance lets up for a moment, there can be consequences, the most likely of which is, at least, a low-grade nausea that just stays with you for the duration. At worst, well, that nausea will be much more vocal than “low-grade”. I have been slightly nauseous for 3.5 days and I have no idea exactly why. It is the mysteriousness of the internal disturbance that I have found to have the highest cost. What is going on inside of me? What did I accidentally ingest? Is it just dehydration? Maybe it’s just nervousness. I’m not exactly sure. But I know it’s there. 

If my entire journey had been focused on being a trip to India, with all of my attentions going towards what is needed to make it a successful trip, I don’t think it would have been too much. But a trip to India doesn’t do well to be squeezed into an “in-between” slot. She well deserves the spotlight.  

Then, of course, there was the heat. It wasn’t bad. But, it wasn’t delightful either. May and June is when tourist season drops off in India because of the rising temperatures.

I was just at the beginning of it and the heat wasn’t too terrible, between 30 and 35 degrees celsius, that’s between 86 and 93 degrees Fahrenheit. One of my tour guides said that, as the months wear on, it will likely reach up to 50 degrees celsius. That is 122 degrees Fahrenheit. I can’t even process the concept of that much heat, let alone imagine being able to handle it. I was hot hovering where we were, but it was manageable. And, even though it was tolerable and even though my driver was keeping me well-stocked with cold water, I could tell, the heat was pulling on the old body battery too. 

I got so much out of my time in India. It was rich. It was educational. It was memorable. And, it was also kind of exhausting. If I ever go back to India, it will be a different kind of trip. One where I have room to get to know the place and the people at a different level than what this trip afforded me.

I had seen, when booking my trip, that there was a fairly common tour that folks in my position – those passing through India on the way from and to somewhere else commonly did – the Golden Triangle Tour. It seemed like a perfect fit for my short 3.5 days there. 

And, it might have been. Maybe for some people it would have been. But not for me. Not at this time. Not on this trip.

I ended up cutting the tour in half and returning to Delhi after 1 day and 1 night. 

Day 1 of my tour was filled with Delhi sites. We visited the India Gate, a war memorial, and the Qutub Minar, a stunning 73 meter tall Minar dating back to 1193 surrounded by an expanse of other remnants of remarkable Indo-Islamic architecture, some crumbling, some retaining terrific detail and artistry.

We were also supposed to see the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial, but it was closed due to the presence of a VIP that day. You could tell it was closed because the cardboard sign that hung from its gates said so. I had been looking forward to seeing it, but I find myself feeling so lucky for all that I get to see, any missed opportunity feels minor in comparison.

The streets of Delhi are worn and rough. I know there is an order to them. There must be.  I’ve been to a good amount of countries at this point. I am no stranger to the uniqueness and nuances with which each geography and culture imbues its particular order. But, there always is one of one type or another. And I’m sure there is one in Delhi too. It’s just an order that is hard for me to recognize coming from my view of the world. From my seat, it looked like (mostly) functional chaos.

If you don’t like the sound of cars honking, don’t go to Delhi. And if you think you’v’e heard them because you’ve been in, NYC or Boston, you are sorely mistaken. In India, car horns function more like turn signals.  They are a way of managing who goes where in the wilds of the streets of Delhi.  Why announce your location with a demure and rhythmic click-click-click, when you can proclaim it with a vociferous and sustained blaze of sound. Horn honking is so welcomed, there are streams of trucks with large, bulbous, colorful words painted on the back that say, “Blow Horn”. Every road is a cacophonous symphony of intervehicular communication, speaking yet one more language that is foreign to me.

And it works. That is part of what is astoundingly beautiful about it. It WORKS! How does it work? How are there cars going in all of those directions while bikes and motorbikes ride through with entire families (including babies in mothers’ arms) on those motorcycles, while another family “crosses the street” between it all and everyone gets where they are trying to go? There is some kind of well-spiced soup made of courage, cooperation, assertion, agency and trust that mixes together with, what appears to an outsider like myself, to be a splash of charmed insanity. It all coalesces to create something that actually does work – or, at least it seems to do so. Not in a way that I would personally prefer, but in a way that is one way to go through the world.

I was both amazed and fascinated by it, and also a bit drained by it. Even safely in the back seat of a car that someone else was driving and navigating and being part of it all, the chaos of it seemed to take something from me just to be in it. I like activity. I like busy-ness. But there was something about the type that I saw in Delhi that wore me down a bit.

I think part of it was that I couldn’t connect to the reason for its existence. I didn’t get it. I didnt get why it needed to be that way. I shouldn’t get it. It’s not my place. It’s a culture different from mine and I just haven’t had enough interface with it to get a chance to expand my horizons to understand it. In NYC, I understand the chaos there. I get the order behind it. I see what’s happening and why. Even in Morocco, the kinetic madness immediately made sense to me. India mystified me. And that’s quite all right.

And, I found it exhausting.

The restaurant we went to for lunch in Delhi was a striking contrast to the strained world right outside its front door. From dirt and brokenness to well-upholstered couches and artfully-crafted statues, the juxtaposition was jarring.

I have never seen a restaurant menu as thick as this one. Paper thickness is typically measured in microns. The caliper of each page of this one could have easily been measured in millimeters, maybe even some fraction of a centimeter.

Lunch was as delicious as the menu was thick.

It was also my first chance to have a real conversation with someone in India to attempt to get any insight into life there, not through the eyes of someone gawking at its seeming chaos in mild disbelief, but from the eyes of someone that calls it home, someone that does understand the rhythm and the harmony in it. 

I knew, from my American eyes, it was hard for me to see past what I would describe as hardship, chaos and, in many places, filth that I saw around me. There are dirty places in every country and in every city. I had never seen it in the way I saw it there. I knew, if I was able to understand the preferences, priorities and context of this place, I would be able to see it through different eyes. I never got fully to that place of understanding, but I did my best not to evalute what I saw through the lense of my own. I did my best to just be curious.

I was also having trouble finding English speaking conversation companions, and my time being as limited there as it was, and not being there to study language, which typically creates a huge opportunity for real-life interactions, I was finding myself in a desert of perspective to make sense of the India I was seeing through the lense of this one teeny portion of it.

I was grateful, therefore, during lunch to get to have a bit of a conversation with my English-speaking tour guide. I asked her what life was like where she was from, a town about an hour away if I recall. I found out that, in her experience, most folks are happy and life is good. The norms are different than what is normal to me. The struggles are different and the advantages are different. A lot of the ways that I learned were part of what made life good were the tight bonds of big families that live together and share the burdens and joys of life with each other. I could feel the contrasts to my own culture and way of being. I am quite sure I didn’t scratch the surface of insight, but it was a start. 

My “English speaking” driver was lovely and kind. I have many wonderful things to say about him. But, I would be hard-pressed to say he is versed in my native tongue. If he speaks English, then the answer to my questions, “Do I speak Italian?” and “Do I speak German?” are a resounding yes. As a result, despite my long hours in the car with him, we mostly only exchanged smiles and nods. I was starting to really rue my decision to have India be the one place I did not put efforts in to learn any of the language myself – not that I would have been able to get any Hindi beyond his English level. Still…I rued.

After our Delhi stops and a stop in a Kashmir carpet shop that resulted in a 4×6 carpet being en route across the Atlantic to our home in NYS, a story worth an entire post itself, I said goodbye to my Delhi guide and my driver escorted me to the town of Agra, 5 hours away. I have already written about a lot of what I witnessed along the way on that drive. All things that made it clear that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, or NYS or the USA, or even Europe. 

We arrived at a lovely hotel in Agra where I settled in for the night and, unfortunately didn’t manage to fall asleep until midnight. Already wiped and insatiably thirsty, none of this bid well for my 5AM wakeup for the sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal.

I wasn’t concerned. I knew, no matter how tired I was, the Taj Mahal would be worth it. 

On this, I was correct.

There are some famous sites I’ve seen in the world that are cool to see because you’ve heard of them but, if you had to explain WHY exactly they are famous, you’d come up blank. And there are some that surprise you with their other-worldly splendor from the minute they fill up your field of vision – where you know in an instant, if you were the first person to ever see this, you would be the one to make it’s greatness known across the world. They are undeniably worthy of their fame. The Grand Canyon. Michel Angelo’s David. And the Taj Mahal. To name a few.

The Taj Mahal is not just a beautiful building, it is a beautiful expression of love. It is an ivory-white marble mausoleum commissioned in 1631 by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It is an ode to her and to his love for her. She died giving birth to her 14th child (only 7 of which survived, including the final one). The Taj Mahal is a profound testament to what love can create with enough money and power to give it a full display. I found myself feeling the tragic poetry of the fact that he gave this incredible gift in her honor, but while strangers from far away lands and times like myself, would get to see it, enjoy it and revel in its striking stature, the one person that would never have a chance is the one person it was built to honor. I suppose, she got to be the receiver of his love while she was alive. The Taj Mahal, grand though it is, I would imagine pales in comparison to being drenched in the love that inspired it.

My whole trip to India would have been worth it just to see it.

We also saw the beautiful Agra Fort with stunning views of the Taj Mahal in the distance.

I caught a glimpse of India’s representative, the peacock, perfectly perched to take in its view of the Taj Mahal. It was so perfect, it seemed staged.

But, still, the two highlights of my trip were of the much more personal variety. For all of the grand buildings and exotic places I get to see, it is always the moments of connection between people that make their way to the top of the list.

Don’t get me wrong, the other stuff is pretty fantastic too.

Speaking of the other stuff, after we left the Taj Mahal, it was time to begin the long drive towards Ranthambore where the tigers awaited.

I was pretty excited about the tigers.

Despite my excitement, my growing tiredness was starting to threaten my enthusiasm. I was pretty drained by 3 nights of not enough sleep and the adjustments my body was making to the manageable, but persistent heat of early May in Delhi. 

We pulled over for the next stop on the tour. I hadn’t realized there was another stop. My tour operator had only sent me the itinerary a few days prior and, I hadn’t made the time to give it a deep review. 

We stopped in a dirt parking lot and I was met by my next tour guide, a chipper man in relaxed slacks and a breathable button-down. He was enthusiastic and raring to go. His English ability was decent. His pronunciation was thick with his native tongue and I found myself struggling to follow what he was saying. The more hot and the more tired I was, the more agitating I found it that I couldn’t understand the rich fountain of information he was spouting, only 70% of which I was actually comprehending. I was getting hot and tired and finding myself starting to reach the edge of something.

We were touring the Fatehpur Sikri in Uttar Pradesh, a fortified city built by Emperor Akbar that was abandoned soon after construction because the area had a lack of available water.  It was beautiful and striking to see…I think. I don’t really know because I actually wasn’t enjoying myself at all by this point. I just kept thinking how much I wanted the whole thing to be over.  I was looking around at this amazing place we were in and thinking, “This is a thing that is capable to be enjoyed by a person that is capable to enjoy. But, I am not enjoying it right now. When is it going to be done!?” Whoa. I had lost my ability to have fun! This is not good. I knew it wasn’t the place I was seeing. It wasn’t my tour guide. It was me. That’s when I knew it was time to call it, that it was time to throw up the white flag and admit that I needed a break. What’s the use in doing all of these amazing things if I don’t have the ability to actually enjoy them?

The tour guide mentioned that I still had a 5-6 hour drive ahead of me. It was already pushing 2PM. Now I was sure. I’m calling it.

When I got back into the car, I gave my driver the news. I’d like to skip the tigers and return to Delhi please.

Man, I had wanted to see those tigers. But there was no doubt in my mind, this is what I needed – for about a million and one reasons.

Immediately, he had the tour operator on the phone. She was having a much harder time letting it go. She seemed pretty disappointed. I understand. She had put in a lot of work to make this tour happened. I reassured her that I wouldn’t be asking for any refund and that I appreciated her efforts, but I knew I really needed to rest. She pitched me on how comfortable the car was and how I could rest there, that we would be heading to a nature reserve and it would be peaceful. She was making great points. But I knew my battery was on a steady decline towards 0% and I needed to do some serious rejuvenating. Six hours in a car in a strange land with access only to strained communication at best is not the path. I needed to be alone, in a comfortable setting. I told her twice. She came in with a full court press, trying to convince me not to miss out on the chance to see the tigers. “When will you be in India again to see the tigers?” It’s a fair question. 

I knew I needed a day to lay in bed, catch up on sleep and get my brain wrapped around the logistics that I needed to prep for ahead of me. I knew, if I carried on, I’d be putting my enjoyment and successful execution of the rest of the trip on the line. I knew it was the right thing. She had me on the ropes with all of her relentless attempts to dissuade me, but after a clutch phone-a-friend call (thanks, Marie!) where I got some back up from someone that was specifically motivated to look out for my well-being, I eventually got her to accept the verdict.

She was worried I would regret my choice.

There is not an ounce, not a milliliter, not even a whiff of regret in a single cell in my body.

It was absolutely what I needed and I soaked up every second of rest in my hotel in Delhi. I even managed to get two swims in at the hotel pool and got a chance to connect with a fellow former triathlon hobbyist in from Bangalore on a short work trip in Delhi. We got to chatting about training, getting out of shape, trying to get back into it and races. The Lake Placid Ironman was on his top bucket list race and I walked away feeling pretty lucky that that happened to be my backyard race!

Another major element of my 3.5 days in India was the fact that this was the only stop on my whole trip that was a pause in the linguistic experience for which this whole trip was planned. I spent my second day there wondering if I had made the right call when I was planning how to use my time there. I had been deciding between turning it into my shortest linguistic dive or just taking a pause from that purpose and making it, like Morocco, a tourist stop. I looked into language schools in Delhi and considered undertaking some Hindi study. I ultimately decided against it, knowing that it would be between Russian, Chinese and Japanese, three languages that are not only wildly different from English, but also wildly different from each other. I figured, with no prior study of Hindi, a week would be fairly pointless and that it would be pretty neat to see some of India’s world famous tourist offerings, like the Taj Mahal and tigers. So, I went the tourist route.

When I was there, I immediately felt the cost of that decision. It just didn’t feel like me. I enjoy tourist things. I try to do as many of them as I can. But, to me, tourist things are like the cake. Cake is delicious. It’s fun to eat. It’s rich. It’s sweet. It’s wonderful. But it’s not a meal. Day after day with only cake leaves you feeling kinda gross and longing for some real nutrients. At least it does to me. Without my teeth sinking into the nutrients of a real education of the language, the people and the culture, with a genuine opportunity to maybe understand a little bit about the people and the country in any kind of sincere way, a way that is more than just a curated experience for a person passing through, I felt something missing. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not complaining at all. I LOVED getting a chance to see some of these remarkable sights. But, the only one I really found myself feeling any deep connection to was the Taj Mahal. I think that is part of what drained me too. Much of the time felt like a distancing from what I am loving so much about this trip. Once I got back into the hotel room to rest and get oriented around other to do’s that I needed to catch up on, upcoming travel logistics, catching up on postcards, doing some study prep in advance of China, I immediately felt more connected to what I am here for.

I didn’t feel this way in Morocco. I absolutely loved every second of that. Morocco also had an organized chaos and raw kind of dirtiness to it – but just in a totally different way than what I experienced in India. And, even though I was doing the tourist thing in Morocco too, I had language experiences all over the place! I got to practice my French with locals. The tour we were on had people from many languages. I got to speak Spanish and French a bunch of times. It was a blast. 

There is a lot of my experience that is hitting the cutting room floor on this post, but one thing I can’t leave out mentioning was the absolute paradox of my ride on the metro in Agra. It is a new metro system, only a year old. I don’t know if the locals have not accepted its utility or if it is just a matter of it taking time for people to start to reorganize their daily customs to using it, or if it is not ecomomically feasible for the majority of folks or what, but I have never, in all of my life seen such a clean and absolutely EMPTY subway system.

Sparkling clean and absolutely empty are two things I did not expect to see in a public facility in India. It was spotless. And personless. The first time we rode on it, anyways. The second time, it was spotless and there were one or two other people on it. 

I have so many questions. 

I’ll just have to hold them for now.

The highlight of my trip, other than my relaxing day in bed catching up on what needed tending, without question was on my final tour before I tossed in the towel and headed back to India. My tour guide in the breathable button-down had me on one of those long golf carts to drive from the parking lot to the entry to India’s forbidden city. In the last seat, facing backwards, back to back with my seat was a young family. There was a little girl, about 8 years old with the wide eyed type of wonder and smile that only little girls are able to create. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, her eyes darting back and forth between me and her mother with a certain excited apprehension. I could hear her mother encouraging her. “Go ahead.” I got a sense that this had something to do with me. I turned my head just a little bit with a slight glance and a smile that said, I agree with your mother, “Go ahead.”

Her eyes lit up as she found the courage to say with beautiful English and the kind of sing songy tone that can only come from the sincere curiosity of a child, “Are you from America?!” She said, proud of herself for asking and excited for the answer that she suspected and hoped to be true.

“I am!” I replied, matching her wide eyes as sincerely as I could. “Are you from India?!” I said, doing my best to strike the same notes so that she would know that she is just as wonderful to me as I appeared to be to her. She said with the same rhythm as I’d used, “I am!”

It was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen. Just so pure. Later, as we passed each other in the architectural wonder we were there to visit, I smiled and waved at her. She lit up and smiled and waved back at me. I lit up too.

Mind you, this was during the tour where I was counting for the minutes for it to be done. I think, maybe that’s part of why I was finally ready to call it after the tour was over. I was spent, but I was also fulfilled. I had had the experience I came to India to have.

And, it wasn’t over!

Later, an hour or so down the road on the way back to Delhi, my driver stopped at a rest stop. Who did I pass on my way out of the bathroom? That same little girl! There was that lit up face again. She initiated the wave this time. She was excited because we knew each other. She had her very own Amerian friend. I waved back and said, “Hi!” She said, “Hi!”

Not a lot of language used. Not a lot of language needed. But a LOT was communicated. 

The Taj Mahal was AMAZING and worth my stop in Delhi and Agra just on its own. But if I had to choose between seeing that and seeing the joy in that little girl’s face, there is no question which experience I would choose. 

And just as the interaction warmed my heart, it also stoked my curiosity. I don’t know what made it so exciting for her to see me. I don’t know what America means to her. I don’t know what seeing an American means to her. I wish I knew. I wish I had time to be in India long enough to get some kind of sense of what her life is like and what she saw when she saw me. But, I remember being a little girl. I remember what it felt like to see things that made my face light up like hers did. I don’t understand why asking me if I was from America gave her that look, but if someone told me I had to travel to India just to give one little girl the chance to have a look like that, if I could do it, I would. 

And, there is one more highlight that has to be mentioned. It’s a highlight that belongs in an entirely different category than the rest. There is a reason that I planned a stop to India without having enough time to make it a linguistic adventure. Yes, it was to break up the long journey from Europe to Asia. Yes, it was because I couldn’t stomach traveling all that way and just flying over a place that had held a certain mystique for me for so long that I really wanted to see in the flesh. And, maybe, for those reasons, I would have done it anyways. But there was one reason that made it a NO BRAINER. Just at the time that I would be making my journey across that part of the world, my best friend from college that I don’t get to see as much as I’d like because she lives in Oregon, 3,000 miles away from where I live in New York, was going to be finishing up a 2.5 week visit to India and would be passing right through Delhi on her way home just as I would be crossing going the other direction. HECK YES we’re gonna meet for dinner in Delhi!

I showed up in Delhi India 16 hours before she did and was going to have the chance to be there to greet her when her plane landed. It was the most surreal and wonderful reunion I could have imagined. We were freaking out to get to see each other! And, of all places, in Delhi, India. It was surreal and wonderful. We only had about 6 hours together, and I would fly so many more miles to get 6 more hours with her! That’s what best friends are like. It doesn’t matter how much distance or how much time there is between you. Any chance you can get is worth it.

And her experiences in India are the perfect example of why my 3.5 days was too much and not enough. Both of her visits to India have been, if I may be so bold as to speak about someone else’s experiences, life changing, profound and beautiful. I think, when you give India enough time to marinate, there is room for a richness of experience that 3.5 days just can’t stretch out big enough to contain.

While 3.5 days felt like too much while I was there and not enough for me to really connect to the place, the culture, the country in any deeply meaningful way, now that I’ve had a little time to catch up on some rest and refuel, I am starting to feel how much it did sink in and how much I have been enriched by my short time there. From the sights I saw, to the rejuvenating I got to do, to the lit up smiles of little girls – old(er) and young alike, maybe my 3.5 days in India was just enough – just exactly enough after all.