Tourist India

Tourist India is, to my mind, a bit exhausting. I recently had a colleague and friend over to visit from the UK. As the person who has travelled around the country it falls to me to be the responsible one; ensuring plans are feasible, trains are booked and boarded and nothing goes wrong. But this is India so things do go haywire occasionally. Travelling around regularly makes it a bit easier and luckily nothing went wrong. Most things aren’t too tiring apart from the struggle to communicate and the continual fight for a fair price. You see it’s the skin tax thing again. 

There are, generally, two tourist India’s. The five star luxury where you don’t see much of the real India at all. You pay through the nose for this and if you ventured into your hotel’s kitchen you might get the idea you weren’t in a decent hotel at all.

The other India is more real but they still try to make you pay through the nose for what you get. I’m off travelling soon as my placement ends. I’ve decided to head somewhere, stay with friends I’ve met. When I need to venture further I’ll hunker down in a half decent hotel and limit the contact I have with tourist India if I can.

For anyone coming here it is fun but you have that same old fight on your hands to not be seen as fair game. In fact if there weren’t so many people coming to India who allowed themselves to get ripped off it might help but in some cases it keeps families afloat so we shouldn’t begrudge. Pay over the odds sometimes to someone who needs it more than you. Don’t be the back packer or foreigner that treats everyone like crap and haggles over every rupee.  

I’m off soon and I’ll be the tourist again. I’m hoping the receptipon I get in Kerala will be more like Amritsar where everyone was friendly and out to help rather than Varanasi where everyone just wants your cash. After a year of working here, I’ve loved it n’ all but I really don’t want that tourist fight. I just want a nice little beach, a massage and a glass of chilled white wine please.

How very Vipassana

Recently I went on a Vipassana meditation course. I was expecting 10 days of no speaking but as it sometimes happens in India what is supposed to happen just doesn’t. You can read about what should happen on fellow vol and friend Izzy’s blog! We both agreed I was a bit unlucky though in the end the result was pretty much the same.

I arrived at the centre and immediately hit it off with S. who like another 5 Western women on the course lived in Rishikesh and hung out learning all about yoga and other spiritual practices. We wondered if we’d be able to remain incommunicado for 10 days and we agreed we’d have to avoid eye contact. We drove out of town through the hills behind Dehradun and arrived at the centre. After Chai and chatting we proceeded to take instructions and started our silence.

Up at 4am the next morning we started the regime of 10 hours meditation a day which was to become strangely enjoyable after a few days. What was not so much fun though rather entertaining was one woman screaming in the mediation hall amidst the rest of us concentrating on our breath. This happened again on day 3. Also one elderly woman had been admitted who chatted to herself throughout and clearly wasn’t in a fit state to participate. On day 5 after the constant talking of some participants got to me I talked to the onsite doctor. I was informed the elderly woman was dropped off by her husband. With a lack of welfare services here he probably just wanted a form of respite care. By the end of the 10 days the women were all looking after her and I suspect she was suffering from Alzheimers.

The mediation went well despite the lack of silence. On day 5 I tried really hard to have a quiet day. It worked until 8:05am when 5 minutes into mediation the doctor passed me some decongestant pills I’d requested. Wait until perhaps I had my eyes open? Not here in India where rules are all so important but in reality always broken. Ho hum.

The evening of day 5 saw a change in the group dynamics when so much talking was going on the old Western students who had done courses in the US and Europe also gave up. We all happily talked to each other outside of meditation sessions in snatched conversations. One who understood more Hindi than I told me the screaming woman thought she had been possessed by demons and on day 3 they had left her body through her nose. By day 6 amongst the insanity I’d given up on silence too. A shame considering I was really enjoying any quiet time I actually got. By then I was getting it and we’d been given mediation cells in the pagoda on site. A relief as every time we had leafy greens for lunch the men would fart their way through the afternoon.

Around this time the hours of cross-legged concentration kicked in and clarity struck. Vipassana can reveal spooky sensations. Things come up from your past that you had forgotten. The smell of the local library’s highly polished floor at aged 8. The dress you wore when visiting the senior school on an open day at age 11. Amongst the inconsequential, the stuff you wanted to forget comes up. The idea is you meditate so deeply the feelings you dealt with using logic can be felt at a deeper level. The trick then is to deal with them at this level of subconscious and truly get rid of them. It sounds a bit pop psychology but it works. It's what makes 10 days of insanity all worth it. Each person has a unique experience and people who attend regularly report feeling differently each time. It’s reported that often people leave with a changed world view or a heightened perspective of the world. They’ve even tailored a special course for executives enabling people to rid themselves of pointless negativities and subsequently enhancing their performance. What is clear is only the brave or the mad do this but we all come out the better for it.     

 

Fever. In the morning, fever all through the night…

Out of 15 volunteers currently in Delhi, 7 have been struck down with mysterious fevers and illnesses. That’s nearly a whopping 50%. 

Dr H., our resident VSO doc must be chanting a new mantra: a volunteer a day keeps the bill collectors at bay. Although I like to think he doesn’t charge to see us VSOers as he is so lovely. One doctor he referred me to said that he’d retired and made his money so he was happy to help out those who were helping others. 

Of the 7 that have been struck down, we’ve had cases of Dengue (2), Chikungungya (1), unidentified fevers (3), a strange rash and unknown vomiting (2). No Malaria yet but it could just be a matter of time.

My fever came and went with joint pain in 24 hours. I was in Tamil Nadu. Back in Delhi three days later it came back with a vengeance and I couldn’t move my arm or see very well. I freaked out when one of my eye balls started clouding over and rang the doc in tears. Not very good at being ill me. He reassured me and I went in for a check the next day. Fever had dissipated and mobility in the arm had come back to the point where it was hard to tell I’d been ill apart from the clear lack of sleep.

I was sent off for 4,000 rupees worth of blood tests. That’s nearly £60! Hard to imagine when you’re used to the NHS. You can see how doctors and hospitals get accused of sending people off for random tests in order to make some extra cash. People tend to be in favour of a government hospital as although basic they tend not to overcharge. I say hospitals are basic but one volunteer here when admitted with Dengue had a plasma TV. I obviously don’t envy the Dengue though.

£60 later and I got to check my results on the internet within 12 hours. I called the doc and said I don’t know what it was then and he said, 'well neither do I!'. The mystery remains and thankfully it looks like I and my fellow vols here are all on the mend…