Agra to Udaipur and Beyond
Today is our last day in Udaipur. We are ready to get back on the road.It’s been exhausting, exhilarating and overwhelming.
I left Bombay with a sense of curiosity and anticipation for the next part of our trip.
We were hoping to see some of Rajasthan and then get up to Dharamsala, which is in the foothills of the Himalayas, but weather being colder than usual quickly had us deciding unanimously that the north was not going to happen this trip. And so, given the distances, what we wanted to see and the time we had left, we decided that the rest of our time in India would be in Rajasthan and our last couple of days in Delhi.
As some of you may know, traveling in India never appears to be a straight forward trip, in fact it swirls and twirls and India decides for you what happens not the other way around. Well, at least that’s my experience. What I mean by that is time seems to go slow or fast forward at its own discretion, distances either take longer than expected or not, places I thought I was going to love, I didn’t so much. And then just as I was relaxing into the isness of it all, we get into a town that totally fits my pictures…and Barb’s as it were.
But back to India, even conversations with the locals seem circuitous, I can never tell whether they like us for us or are we always tourists with dollar signs on our forehead. The rules here are different and so are the boundaries. Can you imagine someone asking you what you do and how much money you make, all within a couple of minutes of meeting you? They do that here. As well, the cast system is still alive and well here. So even in the most innocuous conversations there are many layers that I could not even begin to pretend I understand, except at the most basic level…and even then I wondered.
Truthfully most of the time, on the road, I can live with that, I am after all a Middle Eastern woman who can switch off her Western mind…to some extent (grin). I understand living in circles but this my friends, is over a billion people living in a circular reality, that is as foreign to the Western mind as could be. Adding to all that is the chasm of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, the contradictions of a society that is very religious yet seems to have little regard to its citizenery. I was in a temple where “holy men” actually told me how much to donate and the $25 US I wanted to give was “not enough”. Spirituality is sold and bought wholesale but then who am I with my Western ideas to say a word or judge? Did I not just sign a petition on line that condemns the senseless killing of 100 dogs in British Colombia? No, I cannot judge this society without being a hypocrite…all I can do is have my experiences and take the good from them.
After the Taj Mahal in Agra, and by the time we were in our third city in a couple of days, all three of us began to laugh hysterically at ourselves, our situation, and anything that was even remotely funny. I was also noticing that no matter how beautiful the physical world around me was, something was missing inside me. My body got tighter leaving me with no way to ignore the vice gripping headache that began to ‘hug’ my brain. Yes, something was up.
As I went into the quiet inside I began to see me in my minds-eye my body tightening whenever I saw the children beg, when they knocked on the glass of our car until they could no longer run with it and when old ladies tugged at my shirt and asked me for food by pointing to their mouth. I saw me hold on tight whenever we had five or six guys trying to get us into their shop all at the same time or when the smell of urine was so strong I had to use my scarf to block the smell. I was trying to protect myself from the pain of my own projections so much so that my head and shoulders were feeling like they were seizing up, explaining why I could be in an amazing palace and yet feel a little empty.
I don’t need to get into all the gory details. I don’t think that’s necessary. However, I do feel like I would be only telling half truths if I didn’t mention that yes the poverty, the intensity of people wanting what they think we Westerners have, the constant noise, the begging and the feeling of being out of control in a foreign country did not catch up to us. It did. Seeing the opulence and beauty at the cost of humanity all at the same time is staggering, at least to my mind.
Personally, I always knew that India, just by its very nature, was going to be a great teacher for me. Given its dichotomous state how can I not examine any issues I may have with “stuff” and buying more “stuff”, or the guilt I feel when I say no? So much that goes on in this place tugs at my humanity. However, as I went deeper within myself rather than protect myself against the pain I am happy to say that in the last few days my head no longer feels like it’s in a vice. And, I am relived to report that the emptiness is gone.
I will post the pictures in the order that I took them starting with the Taj Mahal…and let me tell you that no picture could ever even begin to express or show the beauty this place possess. It truly is magical…a testament of love to his third wife Akbar left us magic.
The Relationship Creature 