Island Fever

Sometimes it feels so surreal to be doing what I’m doing. Backpacking or traveling like this isn’t in my family. Granted my family did the ultimate kind of adventure traveling – escaping their homeland on a fishing boat, still I feel kind of like a pioneer because I’m the first and only person in my entire family to ever travel like this. It’s awesome. I think most of my relatives think I’m crazy and partially sadomasochistic, and sometimes when I’m in disconcerting situations I also wonder why the hell am I doing this, but mostly, it’s exhilarating and liberating the kind of self-reliant and independence I feel traveling by myself in a foreign country.

I’ve really fallen off updating the blog. I just haven’t been into the rhythm of it. But there have been a lot of wonderful things that happened since the Tibetan settlement. It was so hard to leave there. It’s so hard to leave a lot of places. It’s easy to love a place, and meet a wonderful group and people and want to stay. But I had to keep the momentum going, and after a week in the settlement, I headed to Mysore.

Dolkar and her family gave me such a warm send-off. The night before I left they made a special traditional Tibetan dinner called ‘momos.’ Essentially, momos are dumplings or gyoza. They made special vegetarian momos for me since the family prefer meat filled momos. In the morning I packed my things, and before leaving, Dolkar, her grandmother and her uncle Tashi, each offered me khatas – white scarfs that represent the purity of one’s self. Tashi dropped me off on the main road just as the bus came. We jumped out of the car waving our hands and shouting for the driver to stop. I threw my stuff on board, hugged Dolkar goodbye and took off.

Mysore is a ‘small’ Indian city. I think there’s still over a million people there. Maybe two. I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s a green city, with lots of trees and parks, and was the seat of the old Maharaja throne. I stayed at the guesthouse that Dolkar recommended called Indira Bhavan. The hotels in this city are from the ‘40s or ‘50s and have a rundown, old school charm. I only stayed in Mysore for a couple days and visited the Maharaja Palace and the Mysore Zoo. The Palace was amazing! Unfortunately they don’t let people take photos of the Palace. But basically it looked like how the Titanic ship looked like in the movie except with more Indian flavor and brighter colors.

I didn’t know what to expect at the Zoo. I was preparing myself for a decrepit, depressing animal prison, but instead I was blown away by the beauty and size of the place. The animals have fairly big enclosures and in between the animal dwellings are manicured gardens and lush plant life. The Zoo had so much variety. It’s the best Zoo I’ve ever been too. Even nicer and bigger than the National Zoo in DC!

I left Mysore after two days. There was not much else for me to stay around for. I took the morning train and got to Bangalore by early afternoon. I stayed with a Fulbright High School Exchange Teacher and his family. Paul and his family are from a small California town outside of Yosemite. They came to India for 6 months for the Fulbright Teacher Exchange program. I spent nearly a week with them in a neighborhoody area of Bangalore. Bangalore itself is completely chaotic, loud, polluted and like every other congested Indian city. But this neighborhood had a lot of character and had a great local South Indian joint on the corner. I think I ate there at least two meals a day. South Indian food is delicious. Unfortunately we don’t get South Indian food in the States. So sad.

Paul and his wife Karen have three girls: 3, 7, and 9. Super cute family. They also have a blog which is way better than mine, updated regularly and has lots of pictures: www.amtutzfamilyindia.blogspot.com. I recommend it.

From Bangalore I wanted to go to the Ajanta, the place of ancient caves of Buddhist carvings dating from the 1st century. The carvings are the pinnacle of Buddhist art and are a World Heritage site. I’ve only heard amazing things about them. But the trains were full booked for weeks going through the nearest railhead to there so I had no other choice but to go to my next spot on the list—Diu.

Diu is really far away from Bangalore. It’s back toward the north and Bangalore is way in the South. I flew into Ahmedabad, an enormous multi-million populated city and the industrial capital of India. It’s not a tourist place so it was unlikely I’d see other foreigners there. The only flight there was at night and I got in really late around midnight. It’s sort of unnerving to arrive any new place late at night. But my nerves were eased by the pleasant conversation I had with the 24 year old girl sitting next to me about her arranged marriage. What a trip that is. She only met her husband to be twice before the wedding ceremony. I think for a total of 3 hours. She’s been married a year and a half now. I asked her if she feels in love or even loves her husband. And she says she’s beginning too now. It makes me wonder what intimacy was like the wedding night and in general. But I didn’t get to ask her that.

I took a cab from the airport and stayed in a Lonely Planet recommended guesthouse. The budget options are slim in Ahmedabad. The room was a crap hole, but the guy who ran the hotel was nice. I don’t know why hotels seem to like that institutional faded neon green color. It’s so jarring when combined with fluorescent lighting.

The next morning I woke up early and walked a few kilometers to the long distance bus station, bought my ticket to Diu for that night. That area of the city is known as the Old City. There are about four old huge mosques in the area with old stone walls and lots of Muslim-owned shops. Just walking around there felt like a time travel. Everyone else was in Muslim garb and I was wearing denim jeans and a long sleeve and pumas. I walked through the market, which was just beginning to open up. The people looked at me, but didn’t care too much that was a foreigner or woman walking around in their world. It was a cold morning, and all the men that were awake and out were huddling around little chai stalls drinking their tea. And like every old place in India wouldn’t be complete without cows roaming around eating from trash piles, or random homeless bums sleeping in the middle of the street.

I didn’t know how I was going to pass the day since there’s not much in Ahmedabad, but while taking breakfast at this random street corner food stall, a French woman traveler came stumbling in. She, like me, was catching a night bus and had to spend the day in Ahmedabad. She was a Godsend! I think she felt the same way. We stored our stuff in my hotel, and spent the whole day out walking around that huge city. We visited the City Museum. It had the most random stuff about Ahmedabad in it. But the absolute hightlight of our explorations was after the museum we went to look for someone to eat. Everything is really spread out in Ahmedabad. We were walking a dusty road for a long time, and then all of sudden came upon this restaurant with a picture of a thali and some Gujarati writing. So we went into the restaurant and it turned out to be a really fancy restaurant that served an amazing unlimited Gujarati style thali. The waiters walked around barefoot with tin buckets of food that they scooped onto your plate with the snap of a finger. It was amazing!

Luckily that night our buses left from the same place only an hour apart. I left first around 8p and so we went on our separate ways.

When I bought my bus ticket, which was challenging because absolutely no one spoke English, they told me the bus would arrive at 5am. But I didn’t think it would actually be on time. And I didn’t know it would be so cold at night. The bus ride was freezing! I decided to take a Dramamine to help me sleep and prevent carsickness. But has it turned out the bus arrived very on time, and the drowsiness effect of the Dramamine was stayed in full effect.

The bus stopped several times for the toilet and chai breaks. When I fell asleep at the beginning of the journey the bus was half full. And when I woke up around 3am during a stop, the bus was nearly empty except for 2 or 3 passengers including myself. We were in the middle of nowhere and I was fully groggy. I remember stumbling, and I mean stumbling out of the bus in the middle of the night in this place in the middle of nowhere. The guys standing around the chai stall just stared (but not the creepy stare). I just think I was the last thing they’d expect to exit the bus.

At times like these I wonder whether I made a good choice to travel to locally. Most foreigners would have taken the tourist bus, which takes you directly to Diu, and is full of other tourists. But the local government bus is always a lot cheaper and always on time and usually isn’t crowded. It can seem more intimidating or isolated, but there’s something special about traveling the way locals do.

The bus I took actually only got me as far as Una, the city outside of Diu. From Una I was supposed to take a local bus to Diu, 12 kilometers away. But since we arrived on time in Una at 5am, there were no buses for at least 45 minutes. I was praying the sun would rise soon. It didn’t. It was okay though because I didn’t get a bad feeling from the place. There were a big handful of other people waiting for the same bus as me. Mostly fisher men and women waiting with their big baskets. It was freezing in Una at 5am. There were a few chai stalls about 100 meters across the way. I could barely feel my fingers. The guy turned the fire on really high let me warm my hands after I drinking 3 cups (their tea cups are the size of a shot glass) of tea.

The locals on the bus were so kind and so lively at 5:45 in the morning. I think they must all know each other because they were laughing and talking and joking. They all greeted me and when my stop came they all told me it was my stop and helped me with my bags. The bus dropped me on the side of the road and sped off. It was still dark as night at 6:15am. Not knowing the short cut, I walked down the dark, unlit length of road to the archway entrance to Diu town. There was no one out except for some cows, stray dogs and an old woman. I walked around the narrow winding roads looking for Super Silver Guesthouse, the place where Pau, my friend from Gokarna, said he was staying. I finally found it at daybreak. The guys running the hotel were asleep in front of the reception door. They gave me a room right next to Pau. I left a note on Pau door and then crashed back to sleep, newly arrived in Diu.

It took me all of a day to fall in love with Diu. It’s an amazing place with such a special energy. Being here is like being a kid again. Pau showed me some highlights of the town and the surrounding villages, and introduced me to the group of people he’d met in the past couple of weeks. There are a lot of cool people here from all over. A few of them are long-term visitors.

Diu is an old Portuguese colony that was only returned to India in 1961. So many of the older people here speak Portuguese, as well as Gujarati. There are beautiful, old Portuguese-style Catholic churches in and around town, and a lot of the houses are built in a Portuguese architectural style. Many of the people on the island look mixed, and there are even some people of African origin. Diu is an island, and it covered in palm and coconut trees. The people are really friendly and chilled. The only thing that’s not so nice about the scene are the seedy, sexually repressed, or alcohol deprived men who come here from the mainland on the weekend to drink. Gujuarat is a dry state and in Diu they can buy alcohol. But that crowd tends to be in one part of town so it’s easily avoidable.

Since coming I’ve spent my days with our group riding our rented vintage bicycles to the beach swimming all day, playing in the sand, having barbeques, riding on the back of tractor trailers, sitting on the roof of the Old Church, eating dinner from the thali stand and dancing lassi man, and then finishing off the day with ice cream from the best ice cream parlor in town. The other day we visited the waterpark that’s a coupel kilometers down the road and spent all afternoon riding water slides and playing the wave pool with intertubes. It was swell.

I’m thinking of staying here through the holidays. There’s a bunch of people that will be here at least through Christmas. I think it’s a good place to hang around for a while.