September 24th - Off To India

I'm getting to recognize the pattern while I'm in the middle of the experience ... which has to be a good thing. Yes, I'm feeling a little nervous about going to India for 7 weeks. I'm confident about the yoga, less sure about all the time ... there is only so much yoga one can do during the day and then what would I do? Would I get bored? So I packed books I'd been meaning to read – I wanted to use the time productively and was also hoping I'd have the chance to reflect and get clarity on some things ... the big one being what on earth I was going to do after my lovely 18 month sabbatical – the end of which was rapidly approaching ...

I arrived at Heathrow in plenty of time – Terminal 5, not the warmest of buildings but very efficient – waiting at the departure gate, I had the strangest feeling in my stomach – just of unease – for what ever reason I didn't believe this trip was going to go as smoothly as my others had ... and as I'm wandering about the gates with this feeling, I notice the flight in the gate next to mine is going to Vancouver – seriously ... I was more than a little tempted to try and get on ...

The flight to Delhi was fine, visa check, bus to domestic terminal check – all was good. (The bus went through the air field and I notice this huge plane with Uzbekistan on the side … I really was on the other side of the world – and it was just so cool!) Checked in for my flight to Dehradun, found coffee and food and even free wireless – I was set ... and then, my flight is delayed ... ok, no biggy, more email ... but then I see, it's been canceled ... shit – what do I do now???? This is a once a day flight destination ... and I'll admit, panic was starting to set in ... so I go as directed to the check-in and was lucky to meet a German woman on the same flight in the same situation – we agreed to share a taxi and she had been coming to India for years and had a travel agent she trusted – yes it would be long, 7 hours or so, but we'd get there tonight and all would be good ... right ...

We set off – and the first thing the German woman says to the driver is – is this the right car? There had been a misunderstanding ... wrong car (too big / expensive) for the long drive ... so we see a little more of Dehli (absolute chaos) while we changed cars and then headed off. The traffic was absolutely incredible ... cars everywhere – no order – horns going incessantly – just unbelievable and incredibly SLOW. A couple of hours later and we were out of Dehli and in the country side, going along a smaller road. The good news, it was faster. The bad news, our driver tells us this is a road the mafia control after dark and where people are often stopped and robbed ... we're perfectly fine he says, it's daylight ... but of course, as we're approaching dusk, and as we seem to hit every pothole or crash over speed bumps and the car shakes and jolts, all I can think about is what happens if the car gets a flat or worse, breaks an axle or some such ... I put my head back, shut my eyes and breathed – and visualized my New Years Day Open House – finally, we're off the road, both of us relieved and 4 hours of the expected 7 hour journey are done.

We stopped for dinner – large fast food styled place – veggie burger and the bathroom, all good – and back in the car. Then we realize just how much further we had to go ... in 4 hours we'd only done 75km of the 225km journey – you do the math ... We were doing ok – until it got dark – and then it was just scary. The road is chaos all the time, but at least you can see – in the dark, there were many, many times I seriously thought the lights coming straight at us were going to hit. I had stretched out with one foot on the front passenger door handle and the other underneath the front seat – I moved my feet as I realized if we were hit, I didn't want my ankles broken. We were both sitting up straight, holding on to the handle and just tense and quiet for the next 5 hours – time moved very slowly and I have never been so conscious of it – every 15 minutes seemed to tick by.

On the journey, I also realized that this somehow was my karma coming back at me full circle. You see one of the decisions that I'd been going back and forth on at the end of my time in Italy was how to get to Dehradun ... the strong advice on the website was to take the train – frequent, cheap, comfortable and easy and they had a travel agent who would help ... the other options were bus or flights and a taxi was the choice of last resort. I was nervous of traveling by myself in India – because of the crowds, chaos and confusion (not a concern of safety) – and so eventually I decided the $ for the flights was worth it – airports are no problem for me and I would get enough real Indian experiences when I was there for 7 weeks - I thought I was set ... clearly I should have taken the train – seems I was destined for a true Indian experience one way or the other ... Within a week of arriving, I was at the train station buying a ticket for the journey back to Dehli – next time, I'll take the advice and just start swimming in the local experience - I'm learning, just slowly :-)

And then we arrived - somehow seeing signs for Ford and Toyota gave me a sense of comfort :-) We found the yoga center and then the house where I was staying and all was good. It's amazing – there were seriously times when I didn't think we'd make it and then once we were here, that all disappears.