Flying Solo

No one ever understands why I prefer to travel solo. And when you tell them you are planning to travel solo in India, they think you are as mad as a cow (the non-holy kind, obviously, as I guess holy cows are impervious to such diseases). But this trip has reaffirmed my belief in solo traveling. The experiences you open yourself up to are unthinkable when you have a partner in crime.

Not that it is truly possible to travel solo in India. While most people think that would be the worst place to start your solo career, I would argue that there is no better place to catch your bearings in the new and foreign world of solo travel. Once you make one Indian friend, meet their family, have your face stuffed with homemade delectables, you are open to a network of endless possibilities. Family is the most important thing in India, and these families are extensive. If you meet someone studying in Chennai, they probably have parents or siblings living in Andra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnatika etc. But the lines are blurred between immediate family and extended family as everyone practically has the same value in the familial hierarchy. So now your contacts in all these states have cousins, uncles, aunts, gurus throughout the rest of India. You call up your original friend, tell them where you are going, and they will pretty much arrange all your lodging and often train station pickup for you. It is impossible to feel alone, even if you want to. Out of the 35 or so countries I’ve visited or lived in, I’ve never found a more hospitable climate, which is refreshing because if you try to visit India without actually wanting to meet and befriend Indians, your experience can often be a difficult one.

While most places have been covered by my new and growing friend network, there are still a few dead zones that need to be filled in. These areas are prone to high populations of hippies or equally obnoxious, non-hippie Westerners, and thus, mainly avoided by Indians. Goa, particularly, is overrun with sunburnt, half naked (or if German, oft very naked), packaged-vacation going Westerners who have no interest in learning about the different cultures of India and would rather spend their holidays avoiding Indians altogether. As I’m sitting here writing this and realizing that things haven’t been as amazing as the other three weeks of my trip, I wonder--why am I here? But then I see my new friend sitting next to me in my peripheral and remember that I’m always in the place I’m supposed to be.

I met Laura on the bus from Mapusa to Anjuna. As is almost always the case when meeting potential travel partners, you start talking, giving a quick synopsis of where you have been until this point, and then a casual ticking off of places you intend to see before you leave. Add the amount of time spent and time left to spend, and you have the typical first five minutes of any traveler conversation. She was wielding the Bible of travelers all over, Lonely Planet. I tend to avoid Lonely Planet, just because travelers treat it like a Bible, and as always, I’m suspicious of organized religion. I do admit, however, that there is often practical information in there and had snuck a peak at the Czech couple’s copy the night before to get a sense of where I should go in Goa. (The Czechs were my companions for the previous 18 hrs. If you are keeping track, you will see that in almost a month of travel, I have not been alone one single night). Anyway, we both got off at the beach and having the same list of places to check out, decided to tackle the quest together.

Always presenting negatives and positives to any situation, I would be remiss to not mention some of the benefits of traveling with someone. #1 Single rooms are hard to come by. You can stay in a room by yourself but you are almost always going to pay the double price, no matter how good your bargaining skills are. This does not mean that I’m advocating always traveling with someone, it just means that you should be open to chance encounters and new friends. Anyway, we realized we had similar travel plans for the next few days and neither of us annoyed the other to the point that we would’ve preferred remaining solo, so we took a room together. The most important thing when rooming with a stranger, other than checking for tell-tale signs of insanity, is to try and glean whether you have similar travel styles. I could tell that Laura was a savvy traveler, laid back, not whiny, had a good smile, had her head on straight, was as frugal as I am, and was looking for the same things in her Indian experience (these are qualities I hope I have or at least try to have) and we got along from the start. We both realized that Goa was not really our scene but were happy to deal with March heat on the beach. Besides, we both had come for the renowned Wednesday market.

Last night, I realized the reason why we both were supposed to have a break from one of our best travels ever to hang out in the Purgatory that is Goa beach life. Around 10 pm, after watching Pulp Fiction in the open air over Tandoori chicken, by far the highlight of my Goa experience, Laura received a call from her father’s cell. She looked unnerved as her father never calls from his cell. (Laura is from the UK by the way). He had called to inform her of her grandmother’s passing. What are you supposed to do when a person you’ve known for barely 24 hrs receives a life-changing or at least reflection-inducing phone call? We had been headed to the beach for a drink and I asked if she would prefer to go home. She thought continuing with the original plan would be better than holed up in the guest house room crying into her pillow. I agreed, and we continued. We ended up having a nice evening, all things considered, and the appreciation I saw on her face when I refused to let her pay for her drink as it was a feel better drink, and people should never have to buy their own feel better drink, was enough to make me feel that I had given her the best thing I could in the position I was in. As I was dowsing off to sleep later, she whispered that she was glad I was here with her. Hearing that made me tear up, having already endured a very emotional evening. It got me thinking: I always hold a special place for the people that touch my life. I enjoy memories of friends I’ve known for years, family I’m known for ever, and random people that I’ve known for mere minutes but who affect me in some way. I always give thanks for the people who come and go in my life, an ebb and flow tide of human interaction; but I never wonder if I have that effect on someone else. Losing a person you love and feeling guilty that you can’t be there with them as they leave this world, is one of the worst things a person can go through. Imagine being alone in a foreign land thousands of miles away when hearing such news and couple that with the knowledge that there is no one to grieve with or simply to talk things through. That’s always the risk you run when traveling alone. Just by meeting her on that bus and sharing a room with her, she was given a little more peace and I was reminded just how fragile but how beautiful the human experience is.

And we don’t have just the sadness of her grandma’s passing to remember; India is riddled with amusing anecdotes, even within the short time we’ve known each other. We will never forget our dirt cheap (ok, dirt cheap for goa, normal priced for India) guest house with the dead bugs that kept dropping in the sink. Only after looking up and seeing a giant spider’s nest (ok ok, spiders don’t have nests, but ‘web’ doesn’t seem to capture the glimmering mass that was hovering from the rafters) did we figure out where the hollow bug shells were coming from. Then there were the three giant cockroaches that paraded around the room to the silent screams of Laura. After corralling them into the bathroom, I was able to squish them to Laura’s satisfaction. Sweeping them to a corner, they remained there for at least another day. Who knows where their final resting place will be. Then there were the dogs, vicious sounding but most likely little pussy cats in reality. They came running after us after we tried to get into the guest house the first night. I came armed the second night with the standard dog-annoying rocks that were so useful during my 3 months in Mexico. In fact, I have numerous other musings but they all involve some sort of animal and are probably not adding much to the general image I’m trying to convey.