5 Maart heb ik India achter mij gelaten en nu is het tijd om terug te kijken. Samen met Martin, uit Duitsland, heb ik na onze ashramtijd naar verschillende boeiende plaatsen in Zuid India gereisd. Tijdens het reizen hebben we veel met elkaar gesproken over India. Nu onze reistijd er samen op zit waren we nieuwsgierig om dit met elkaar te delen. Bij deze onze reflecties in het Engels in twee aparte blogberichten.....Enjoy!

Difficult country
Loud and busy: Wherever you go, there are many people. Whatever city you are heading to, it is much much bigger than you expected (even if you feel, that this is in the middle of nowhere it can be easily a one-million-people place). Whenever you are so courageous as to go into the city, there is even more traffic than you ever expected. Beside buses no public transport system exists in the cities. There are just too many people living in this country. 1,2 billions. And still growing.

And if you ever think you managed to find somehow a silent (?) place - in a minute there will be at least two of them looking at you with their dark brown eyes, asking questings .... - and you are back in the middle of it. The only (!) exception are the remote tourist places. Nice hotels, cool guest houses. Sometimes we found them during our travel time - and that was just wonderful. My hut in the guesthouse in Hampi looked directly into the ricefields. No one. No sound. In Mysore a wonderful luxurious hotel where I got a feeling how Maharadschas lived formerly. Or going back to Hippie-Time in Goa. Only some monkeys in the jungle disturbing somehow the peaceful nothing.

Peeing and shitting : My first impression from India, when I just got out from my hotel: a dead rat lying down the 'street' (a dusty gravel-something) and a man sitting there and peeing. Not bothered at all. When you are in a night-train and look outside the early morning, you see them all sitting and shitting (only men - there is my unsolved question about where ....).

Waste and odours: This is very obvious but still extremely challenging for me. There is waste nearly eaverywhere in this country. Along with the waste come the odours. There are always strong smells in the air. As they are constantly burning their waste somewhere along the road, there comes a strong acid smoke along with it.

I discovered three phases of reaction within me to all this special sides of India: Cultural schock first. Then: Being curious and wanting to understand it. And third: being done with it. Not willing to see it any more.

Easy to enjoy
Colours and abundance everywhere. It is just a pleasure to see women in India. Even in the smallest village they wear their beautiful saris and salvar kamez. They are so beautiful with their long hairs, with all the colours on them - joyful to watch them. The same is true for the Hinduism: the temples are all about colours and odours, pure abundance. Once I was at a Shiva-Temple and I really tried hard to go into all the ceremonies supplied. It startet with 108 coins that had to be thrown in baskets, praying every time the 'Om Namah Shivayah'. Than I got some lovely little orange strings; I had to tie them somewhere and say my prayers. Than came the first priest at the Ganesha-Statue. (Genesha is the favourite god of most indians with the elephant head and he provides with help if you face obstacles in our live). So the blessings from the priest celebrated with an open fire brought me in contact with Ganesha´s power. Third I had to pour coconut-milk about a lingam, sort of an impressing phallus (no erotic thoughts although). Number 4: Several altars of different nice gods and lingams to say your prayers. Number 5: throwing a coin in the little lake (and saying what? guess! ) 6: Getting a candle and let it flow on the lake. 7 and 8: I was really exhausted and skipped it - I only wrote a little note with some of my wishes and threw it in a fire-pot at the end. After so many prayers: what ever can go wrong on my trip?

Open faces: I never before was in a country with people being so interrested and curious. They just start to ask questions and really want to know. They don´t hesitate. Taking a bus or a train that is somehow obvious. But when you are a in a riksha and the traffic doesn´t move - and one of the other rikshas nearby starts his little conversation: this is really special.

Special places: Is it easy to enjoy Goa? All the nice hide-aways, some of them really luxurious, some of them very basic but on a wonderful beach in the middle of a perfect scenery? Yes, sometimes this is just wonderful. Even if there were too many people there. Even if it is clear that this is somehow not India but what happened to it in this last years. But having a decent meal under the sky, fresh fruit juice on the beach while watching the sunset, this is no too bad.

Surprises
The variety of food and spices really surprised me. Ok - there is no variety in side dishes. You only have the choice between rice and rice. Plain rice or lemon rice, coconut rice - or whatever rice. But beside that there is such a variety of tastes and smells. Probably difficult to imagine if you don´t know indian food. Even after many weeks we were surprised when a cook prepared for us sort of a starter having nothing to do with everything we had eaten up to this moment.

Second: Indian people are much stronger in language than I thought after my first weeks. I was really impressed to learn that everybody (that is almost true!) learns at least 3 languages with different letters: First their mother language (and there are many in India - many of them are spoken by almost as many people as live in Germany). Then Hindi. Third English. I met many people speaking at least 5 languages fluently - and even 7 is not really an exception. But it took me a time to get acquainted to the special english they speak - and to realize that they don´t speak a bad english but a special one. That the problem is not them but me to understand. I somehow adapted.

It is not really a surprise to know that poor people can be lucky. But it is really one to experience it. And I have no idea how to react to the situation. I feel sorry for them - but somehow that seems not be adequate. There was one key word for me coming in my mind wherever I was and saw them selling something, willing to give advice (for money), starting a little business: desperate. They all seem desparate to somehow survive. Kreative yes. Proactive, not only lying around as you would imagine after having seen to many books about India. They really try hard. But in many cases you just feel sorry - and there you are back again.

Special Moments
A special moment for me was the experience of an overnight bus. I really wanted to go into it. Before that I had travelled with normal buses and a long distance bus, normal trains and an overnight train - but I didn´t know how an overnight (non A/C) bus worked. Now I know it. Expecially in combination with these roads in India, being small and bumpy, allowing a maximum speed of 40 in average. And - this is really special here - there are speedbreakers everywhere, giving your journey a very specific feeling. Especially in a night-bus. I was (un-)happy to have the upper 'bed'. You can´t sit, so you have to lie down - and will lie there for the next 11 hours (what is not true because from time to time there are breaks as there is no toilet in the bus). And you really try to sleep. What is not easy with all the bumps and the driver working really hard on the road. Overtaking, speeding up, speeding down. But after having lied on the floor in the ashram, even that didn´t hold me back from sleeping....

Dolphins and other animals. Yes there seem to be dolphins all around here. I saw them on 2 places and I really like it. Giving the fact that there seem to be less and less fishes this seems to be even more special. I liked it to look at fishermen when they try to catch fish. I saw them alone throwing out a little net (in Tonga I remember them throwing the net and having a catch - and here in India I never saw one succeeding), saw them in Cochi with the famous old huge chinese nets for 5 men (and even after one hour of hard work not one fish came up) and I followed them in Varkala where 20-30 men worked together early morning for hours and the same amount of fish (these 20 fishes were really small - and there was much more waste in the net than there were fishes). Did I mention the monkeys? Probably not even necessary as they are a little bit allways around, but still special for me.

And there is a comment about the cows in India: At first it is just funny to see them walking around everywhere. Than I was puzzled to see them working on the gabbage tons, eating waste (mmmmh - here in India it is really easy not to eat meat anymore). At last it is getting totally annoying when you drive with the scooter and they come out of the nowhere and block the road immediately.

Special moment for me: Being lost in really ugly town. Finally finding sort of a vegetarian restaurant. And there he comes, this old man. His english is poor, but he understands that our energy is even poorer than his english. And he decides about our menu. He is so happy to help us (the only westerners - always very obvious here) - and we enjoy. It is Kerala style, served on a banana leave and eaten with the hand.

Summary
For me, India is a country of intensity. The contrasts are immens. When I came to the point to think 'I just don´t like it' - in the next moment there was this lovely friendly person helping me. When I was done with the smells, I enjoyed a good meal. When all the waste troubled me, there was a wonderful ceremony in a temple. I felt like: If you really want to experience India you can´t avoid it. It is exhausting but rewarding. It is never 'boring', most of the times just too intense.

India talks to the heart - and to the soul.

Martin