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Travel Category
It’s been a long road back home in many ways after my three months sabbatical in India. It was time to return and I was ready to be home. But when one spends that long in a culture that is so other there are usually a few repercussions.
A re-entry period is necessary for most travellers. There’s tiredness from the long return trip (a fog-enforced layover in Hong Kong lessened our exhaustion this time), reverse culture shock (never heard of it until I had a firsthand experience), potential health issues like flu or colds, then finally the picking up of the pieces of one’s life at home. It usually takes about two weeks to feel fully back in your life. Read more
I like the city of Delhi – many don’t. I should really say I like Paharganj, the area of New Delhi where we usually stay. It’s a 5 minute walk from the Metro, so quite handy to get around. This is our hotel ‘before – last fall’ & after – in January. All the wires were being put under the street before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, hosted by India in about 8 months. It’s a huge task. The front steps of our hotel, & other buildings were encroaching on city land, so they had to be pushed in.
That’s the back of me in the Old Delhi market, not far from Paharganj. That area is really very old, a fascinating throwback, & mostly Muslims live & work there. The second pic, also Old Delhi, shows the fog in January. I’m sure the polution plays a part in it, but mainly it’s because of the cold air coming down from the Himalayas in the north (this is the fog that prevented us from flying in, then out of Delhi in the days before our departure for Canada – See ‘Re-entry: Reverse Culture Shock – Jan. 22nd)
There are more street scenes below.
Well, I’m back here in Gibsons now, on the beautiful Sunshine Coast of BC, after a challenging time trying to get out of India.
Delhi has been plagued by heavy winter fog for a couple of weeks (just checked, it’s now Friday night there and it’s 11 degrees celcius and foggy at the airport as usual!). We were unable to land in Delhi from Goa on Wednesday the 14th; had to take a very slow, horribly bouncy overnight busride from Jaipur, Rajasthan, where our plane was diverted to, arriving in Delhi at 7:30 am Thursday instead of 11 pm Wednesday night.
Delhi Fog - from Straits Times
We had already lost half a night’s sleep on Monday night due to a widespread power outage in South Goa, and our inability to sleep without our fan. So we caught up on our sleep Thursday night at our favorite hotel, The Prince Polonia, in Paharganj, Delhi, where they treat you like family, and where we know the owner, a wealthy philanthropist, quite well.
Then off we went hopefully to the airport on Friday night at midnight for our 4 am flight to Hong Kong via Bangkok, then onto a connecting flight to Vancouver. But it was not to be! We sat on the tarmac from 4 to 8 am waiting for the sudden influx of heavy fog to lift, eating our breakfast. When we finally arrived in Hong Kong, our flight to Canada had already left. The good news was that we were put up at The Regal Hotel, right beside the Hong Kong Airport, given a large room, and three sumptuous buffet meals: dinner, breakfast and lunch. So we were able to catch a good nights’ sleep, and were awake only for one night instead of two in a row! The plane the next evening had many empty seats: the same thing had happened with the passengers on their connecting flight from Delhi to Hong Kong!
From our dazed, jet lagged position, we view our tiny town of Gibsons as incredibly quiet after the hussle and bussle of highly populated India. Even Goa in south India, although more laid back than the north, is a busy place, with much of daily life taking place outside in the community, on the street and in the backyards, where people and their pigs, chickens, dogs and goats intermingle.
As the days go by we slowly become accustomed to our town and to our home again. The reverse culture shock on re-entry is less each time we travel. We’re beginning to venture out in the world, driving up to Sechelt for chiropractic treatments and a visit to my Mom on her 88th birthday yesterday. I was very glad to be with her on her birthday, and co-incidentally it fell right on the day of the monthly birthday party!
The challenge now that I’m back is to maintain the optimism and the benefits of the healing I experienced during my time in Dharamsala, home of HH the Dalai Lama. In that spiritual place surrounded by the monks on all sides, everything and anything seemed possible. I could feel my limiting thoughts simply dropping away, and I became clearer about many aspects of my life. I was able to step back and see my self doubts for what they were, simply illusions.
It took me about a week to acclimatize to being here; it’s very hot (close to 35 degrees celcius today (~95F) & that’s getting harder for me, especially when it’s humid. But perhaps more importantly, I just didn’t feel like doing the veging, holiday mindlessness after being away for 2-1/2 months already.
There’s a huge difference between volunteering & travelling & we had to adjusted to that after the 6 weeks in McLeod Ganj. But when you travel, you meet fellow travellers with shared experiences & often ideals also.
Vacationing, on the other hand is a more fixed position, if you will. Often the people at nice resorts are quite private, keeping to themselves & their families.
But after a time, we’ve found that some of our fellow guests are also, or have been travellers, & we’ve been able to share some experiences with them.
And as the days have gone on, we’ve been able to give ourselves permission to relax into the experience, to do nothing much except swim & read, & our days have developed an enjoyable rhythm to them.
Been in Udaipur, in South Rajasthan for just over a week now & thoroughly enjoying it. The view from our room & from the rooftop restaurant is spectacular – we see the whole of Lake Pichola & the old town (about 450 yrs. old).
The traffic’s still crazy in the tourist lanes on the other side of the lake, reached by a footpath, a bit hard on the nerves, but doable. Our favorite place to visit is the huge Indian market, very close to the tourist beat, but oddly free of foreigners. The vege market’s the best with its kaleidascope of colors. Whatever we buy here in the Indian market we pay regular Indian prices, rather than ramped up tourist ones. For example my made-in-India watch cost Rs280 (about $7).
We see no women at our family run hotel; all the kindly, English speaking staff are male, except for the family matriarch, who ‘womans’ the downstairs desk in the late afternoon, greeting guests with a friendly ‘namaste’ & selling them toilet paper!
Fortunately we meet females in the service industry – our lovely travel agent & the family across the lane from our hotel who I had chai with after a very skilled shoulder & neck massage from their 20-year-old daughter.
Tomorrow we’ve been invited on a short road trip by our travel agent & her colleague, to some villages including his home village, then to Mt. Abu overnight. Looking forward to it.
