I shared with Mariana my last long trip in India.
This one brought me first to the South, for the 3rd time to a state that definitelly feels like you're out of India: Goa - in a stay that from 2 nights ended up in 8 (just what we needed!). Then back again to the so different North: Delhi and Agra. In the North-East, two new very worth visiting spots: Varanasi, the berth of the India's spirituality, and Bodhgaya, the berth of Siddhartha as the Budha. Finally the central Mumbai, which I now saw with different eyes.
This was a phase when my tireness of being treated as lesser than anyone deserves and undergoing undignifying situations was getting to the maximum. My delusion total at points.
- The boy with a Hotel Management Degree working in one of the poor Indian Railway Cafeterias, alleging a communication weakness (I think he was gay and thus he didn't stay long in hotel chains run by Indian 'business-MEN'). I wrote him a recommendation comment in the suggestion book and me and Mariana will definitelly write him a recommendation letter for a proper hotel job whenever he asks us to. He was polite and effective as almost no one we found in this country: that's what clientelle is looking for though hardly any enterprise seems to have realized it here.
- The burning ghats in Varanasi, where over 150 dead bodies arrive per day.
- What everyone called 'misconduct': when part of the railway was bombed in what was said to be common 'local terrorism', very close to Gaya where I expected a train to go back to Varanasi. This led to a series of misinformation, 3 hour waiting, and a train trip that should have taken 5 relatively comfortable hours and ended up in 12 quite disputed hours. Result: the whole day was destroyed, but of course we arrived safely.
- Walking the steps of Lord Budha in Varanasi and Bodhgaya, namely around the Bodhi tree where he got enlightened.
- Realising the theatre that adults and children do to beg, transfigurating themselves, doing special dreadful agony-like voices. often lying.
- The best Lassi in India, sweet, thick, eatable with spoon, dry fruits inside: in an Agra roof-top restaurant having the Taj Mahal silhouette as a neighbour.
- The undescribable Spiritual Disneyland of India in a main metropole, which name I won't mention for the sake of respect and discretion. Included: motion toys and giant screens depicting the life of the Swamiji.
- The fact that, in the mundane India, even the people that seem to go out of the ordinary and give you a sense of relieve and hope as they stand out from a generally lame majority... in the end all of them deceive the expectations you had thought them to surpass.
- The Budhist temples in North-Varanasi and in Bodh Gaya. Simple truthful philosophy, beautiful practices, powerful mantras, inspiring places, colourful temples. ---- Feeling everyday more spiritual, although I'm a mere beginner even as a seeker.
- Almost being hit on the ear by one of thousands of red liquids being spit from an Indian's mouth out of a train. Being forced to hear noices from the inside of men's bodies all the time (burping, gobing, spiting, etc - !!!!!).
- The riders of cycle-rickshaws in Northern India whose feet don't reach the pedals.
- VARANASI AIRPORT, flying to MUMBAI (!): NO ONE AT ANY POINT ASKED US FOR OUR PASSPORT!!!!! NO COMMENTS. I had to go and identify our luggage in the hangar on its way to the airplane after checking it in.
- Lies everywhere! Being cheated. But still naïf sometimes. Feeling irreversibly fed up with the country and the way it works.
- Silent Noice party in Neptune Point, end of Palolem Beach, South Goa. Great party with head-phones, three frequencies playing different DJ's and a great setting watching the beach from the rocks.
- The Good Life in Palolem, Goa, and the things I tried there.
- The full-moon night in Palolem beach, when its light made the sand white and reflected in waters that rose to my feet, sitting on a beach swing.
- Learning with Mariana that treating them bad, that's the only way it works for foreigners. No more minding being rude, even laughing unrespectfully in the face of no-minded people.
- Feelings like compassion and respect just vanish from you after a while of living and travelling this country because you've been deceived so many times. In the streets they don't have the minimum principles.
- Indians in its gross mattering majority are sadly totally resigned.
- Incredible levels of challenge: risk and lack of higiene one after the other.
- Nauseating and despicable behaviour of common men. Submissive and apathic behaviour of women.
- They don't touch food and drink containers with their mouth, including water bottles and glasses.
- They paint their children's eyes in black from when they are months-old.
- Babies don't cry. Children don't complain. They have suffered too much before.
- The ceremonial side of Varanasi, the belief and the mystical side of the Ganga. Seing them meditating, bathing and drinking out of those bacterial waters that apparently get no one sick. Seing it by 5.30 am... and still the foggy amazing sunrise!
- Indian Hotel number: 30 or so? Have seen a lot, believe me!
- Seing Mumbai with different eyes as you get a view to the bay from Renato's apartment.
- A Bollywood-like wedding on a private beach at Intercontinental Hotel in South Goa, in which we ended up by chance. Dozens of cooks, dozens of masks, stage, lighting and a sky filming-camera: a lot of dancing in a Carnival-like atmosphere. And that must have been only one night among the ceremonies that usually last for days.
- There are definitelly 2 INDIAS.
- The reinforcement of an eternal friendship with Mariana Aflalo Lopes, original from Santos, SP, Brazil, but one of my girls, a woman from the world, and a woman from the heart.
