Design Vagrant

This was tooled on the back of a rickshaw. As if riding in rickshaws through busy city streets isn’t scary enough, it was also shocking to see swastikas all over the place. Especially just coming from my first trip through Eastern Europe, it was literally shocking to the system to see them used so abundantly. But, of course, our western associations with the symbol are much more recent compared to the rich history of Hinduism. 

From wiki: The word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit svastika - “su” meaning “good” or “auspicious,” “asti” meaning “to be,” and “ka” as a suffix. The swastika literally means “to be good”. 

Red and gold flowers dominate East Indian ceremonies. Marigolds are a symbol of creation and regeneration, and are believed to bring good luck and happiness. All flowers are considered pure, and therefore an acceptable offering to ancestors, spirits, and gods. These flowers were sold on the street by this woman and many like her as religious offerings.

Varanasi is one of the oldest still-habituated cities in the world. Hindis consider it one of the seven holy cities, taking pilgrimages here to bathe in the river Ganges. Its believed that if you die here, you are given salvation. So people are cremated in the ghats by the bank of the river and their ashes are sent to float downstream, where others are taking spiritual baths to remit their sins.

The bathings and rituals peak before sunrise, and after sunset the ghats have elaborate services with dancing and fires and all kinds of things that are mind blowing. The city itself is a bit overwhelming, a certain spiritual heaviness sits amongst the many touts there to sell jewelry, rugs and other things to the tourists.

Rickshaws zoom you by between cows, cars, and very old buildings. At this point, I still thought I would die every time I got in a rickshaw to get anywhere but over the next few days I learned to trust these chariots and even began to enjoy the thrill of it.

The evening boat ride we took to watch the ceremonies left me with a little passenger—a little tick stuck to my ribs. It wasn’t a big deal, but I’d never had a tick bite before and didn’t know you aren’t supposed to rip them out, which is exactly what I did in a panic. The bite stayed swollen for about 5 more weeks, but ticks in India don’t carry disease the way they do in the States. Still completely overwhelmed by the culture, I left the hotel that evening with just two well-traveled tour guides and had some local mutton and chicken curry at a hole in the wall place down some very dimly lit streets. They even managed to gather up some spoons for us though the dishes are traditionally eaten with your hands. I was starting to get into the swing of things.

Water Buffalo are native to the subcontinent and were domesticated there over 5000 years ago. Don’t worry, if you just stand there, they will walk around you.

A man washes his elephant in the river of Chitwan National Park in Nepal.

This was my first glimpse of the Himalayan mountain range.

While I was on my adventure through Europe, I met a young Canadian girl in Milan (shortly after the snatched-purse-incident), who had saved money for a year and was doing a 3-month trip through Europe, 4-months overland trip through Africa (from South African along the Eastern Coast to Egypt) and then another month in Turkey. She was a few years younger than me and totally fearless and inspired me to extend my trip and go to Nepal and India on my own for two more months.

That was when my blogging fell off, due both to complete culture shock and lack of consistent internet. But the two months that followed were really life-altering. 

If you travel to get lost like I do, to really step out of yourself, your world, your comforts, there’s no place like the subcontinent to experience other-worldliness here on earth.

After getting used to the noise level, the smells, the brightly colored garments and all the staring, I completely fell in love with India. After adjusting to such a densely populated country, there’s very few things that stress me out now. And my perspective of comfort and lifestyle has completely shifted. Yes, I appreciate what we have here in the West, but also know that I can go without it and that is truly liberating. 

The pictures following this blog post are from Nepal or India and were captured either by me or by a British man I met on the trip, Kevin Pegrum. I adjusted the colors on all of them to make them feel as other-worldly as it felt to be there. All the stories, however, are my own.

But this picture was the very beginning. I took a train from Granada to Madrid, then flew to London, then to New Delhi, and then to Kathmandu the next morning, when I got my first glimpse of the range that separates the continent.