Memories from my final Big Trip in India

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.

1. 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.
   
2. The burning ghats in Varanasi, where over 150 dead bodies arrive per day.


3. 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.


4. Walking the steps of Lord Budha in Varanasi and Bodhgaya, namely around the Bodhi tree where he got enlightened.


5. Realising the theatre that adults and children do to beg, transfigurating themselves, doing special dreadful agony-like voices. often lying.


6. 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.


7. 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.


8. 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.


9. 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.


10. 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 - !!!!!).


11. The riders of cycle-rickshaws in Northern India whose feet don't reach the pedals.


12. 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.


13. Lies everywhere! Being cheated. But still naïf sometimes. Feeling irreversibly fed up with the country and the way it works.


14. 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.


15. The Good Life in Palolem, Goa, and the things I tried there.


16. 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.


17. 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.


18. 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.


19. Indians in its gross mattering majority are sadly totally resigned.


20. Incredible levels of challenge: risk and lack of higiene one after the other.


21. Nauseating and despicable behaviour of common men. Submissive and apathic behaviour of women.


22. They don't touch food and drink containers with their mouth, including water bottles and glasses.


23. They paint their children's eyes in black from when they are months-old.


24. Babies don't cry. Children don't complain. They have suffered too much before.
    
    
25. 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!


26. Indian Hotel number: 30 or so? Have seen a lot, believe me!


27. Seing Mumbai with different eyes as you get a view to the bay from Renato's apartment.


28. 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.


29. There are definitelly 2 INDIAS.


30. 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.

The Other Side

To everything of marvelous I've been saying about India, my experiences and travels, some reality is naturally missing.
And probably because now I'm in countdown to return, the contradictions start jumping even more to my eyes and things that I took as inevitable start adding up and bugging me.
And of course I have to mention them to you at some point. So now is the time.
Here is the possible summary, of only the things that occurred to me now.

Of course you find exceptions, but for sure the rule in this country is as I witnessed:

They have no ‘collective thinking’.

They naturally try to take advantage of every situation.

They are very rude. To an outrageous point.

There´s no such thing as client service and satisfaction except in 5 stars.

To be a foreigner means to be seen as 'a walking dollar bill' (quoting Mariana).

The misery is really miserable here and many social roles and rules just reinforce it and make it inescapable for many right from birth.

To be a tourist here is challenging, to be an expatriate is a daily fight that in the end wears your energy and patience down.

I’ve never seen more lack of efficiency, logistics management, organization, information. E.g., it took me 5 hours in the main post office of Bangalore to finalize the process of giving in my parcels to send to Portugal. I had to accompany all the phases of the process to make sure the boxes didn’t get wrongly tagged, weighed (which at first they still were), placed, etc.

Their mind-set is very rigid and oriented towards survival, advantage and rituals. I’ve hardly seen or met anyone who seemed to be happy.

CHILDREN are spoiled if they are boys, put up with or mistreated if they are girls (mostly because parents will have to pay loads to the groom's family for them to get married). They're put to work or crippled to beg for money.

Animals, namely street-dogs, are often mistreated.

The corruption is very high and works at all levels of society.

You see irresponsible action all the time:
- for public safety (maniac driving; street lighting/energy having exposed cables and high tension circuits at hand level; unstable sidewalks and construction structures; the Police maintaining metallic structures in the middle of the road with no notice or illumination, etc etc etc),
- for public health (burning garbage in the street; throwing any sort of garbage anywhere, even rivers, even office floors!; even supermarket items are full of dust)...

The level of Civilization of Indian society is very low.

This is a country of contrasts where you keep bumping into opposites.

Socially they are stuck to ancient cast system, prejudice and pre-conceptions that limit the life potential of the Self.

There’s little space for love in this culture. It’s more about rituals, obligations, convenience, logics and one's or one's family's goals.

They forbade dancing in Bangalore and any place closes strictly until 11.30 pm. Justice definitely doesn't target the actual problems.

They lack assertiveness. Even their head movement for 'yes' looks like 'more or less' or 'maybe' or even 'no'. And they don't know how to say 'no' or 'i don't know'.

Their notion of hygiene is VERY poor, so you definitely have to learn how to share your space with cockroaches, lizards, spiders and many sorts of biting mosquitos.

Shops, pharmacies, all sorts of businesses look exactly the same from the outside and you can rarely find what you want at first.

Women hold a very poor condition irrespective of their social status. The poorest and oldest work in construction (!). The younger and richest can only wait for the day they'll be given to a man chosen by someone else. The average cannot expect to be spoken to by a man. In many cases women are the ones working while the man stays sitting and drinking at home, and plus they suffer abuse.

People have hardly any social life, they live their family's or their husband's family's life, very often not their own.

Dignity doesn't exist here as I have known it until today. Not only do many people not act respectfully and don't act as to be respected, as also the cast and social differences really make people treat others as if they were not the same race or kind (either too tyrannically or too submissively). Plus there's the whole condition in which people appear to you to beg etc ETC ET CETERA.

People simply accept and repeat what their ancestors have done, evolution is very relative in this country and mostly stimulated by foreign investment.

ULTIMATELY AND SURPRISINGLY THIS COUNTRY WORKS IN CHAOS.

Memories from South-India

I had visited all those places: Goa, Hampi, Pondicherry, Chennai, Bangalore, Allepey, Fort Kochin (only Mumbai - the point of origin - I hadn't, but still I didn't this time, after some typical but personally rare digestive problem that kept me in bed)...

... but to re-live these sites with you, my darling, made a whole lot of difference. I love you forever.

Again this is not the story of my trip with my sister-like friend Ana Gil (a.k.a. Ana Sanchez de Sousa, Ana Gil de Sousa Pinto, Aninha or Docas), but the story of some first striking memories from South-India in the 1st fortnight of Feb'09 with her.

1. The attempt of a pseudo-guru to ask for money for some lucky-charm objects and a forehead paint tikka alleging a religious festival while we still carried our backpacks together for the first time.


2. Putting pain-killer mint gel in my mouth in an attempt to brush my teeth in a (quite common) pitch-dark guest house room in Allepey, Kerala.


3. Sleeping in never-washed brown dirty berths and hearing the vomits of someone 4 am in train Hampi-Chennai: immediately rated 2nd grossest experience in India (classified under a revolving stomach).


4. Having our heads full of flowers and eating fruits from the trees while walking the canal villages, homes and rice plantations of Allepey with a local villager.


5. The contrast in cities like Mumbai and Pondi between touristic and urban/local areas.


6. The moving fact that Ricky came to Mumbai just to say goodbye to me. Really appreciated it, dear. Sorry for having had to stay in bed.


7. Great sunset on top of Hannuman/ Monkey Temple, Hampi.


8. Good guides: good people: T. - village tour in Allepey; call rickshaw driver Vikram if you go to Hampi for any pick-up or drop or day tour: he is honest like there are few, very helpful and a nice person: his number: 00919480568903.


9. My carry-around small back-pack always having everything that was needed.


10. Meeting young, middle-aged and aged women travelling India alone and finding it easy. Like our newly made friend Ute, from Germany, in Hampi - the 65 y.o. youngster, our pal.


11. 'Ladies Only' marked zones: bus seats, train wagons, queues.


12. Being stolen an ice-cream by a crow while walking Fort Cochin ocean promenade, reminding me of having been stolen 6 bananas by a monkey on the way to Taj Mahal.


13. A Cape-Verdean Coladera music playing at 'Upstairs Italian Restaurant' in Fort Cochin, after Kathakali (again an amazing artistic experience).


14. Ayurvedic massage in a wooden table with oil: the 2 girls by 2 girls.


15. The elephant bath, feeding and ride in Perimbavoor, Kerala.


16. Having my very travelled sandals sowed for the 3rd time.


17. Eating egg biriyani (an Indian rice specialty) with hand in my final train.


18. Staying in a family-house in Kochi.


19. Palolem Beach, Goa, and the will to stay longer.


20. Ana's determination and success in overcoming just about enough of all India's personal challenges: hygiene, mosquito bites, garbage and dirtiness, danger and relative risk, fear of malaria and others, men's looks, usage of public low budget crowded transportation and accommodation, luggage carrying and pains, heat, confrontation with poverty and misery, disturbing noise and loud horning, constantly having someone trying to sell to you = cheat you, etc.


21. The way everything simply worked in spite of chaos.


22. The way I started really missing home and people for the first time in my life after the taste of familiarity through Ana. The re-awakening of romantism.


23. Feeling like a good traveller and back-packer.


24. The orange(st) sunset in Kerala.


25. Sitting on the open-door steps of train Madgaon-Cancona, Goa.


26. The trip in suburban bus to Auroville: overcrowded, literally glued to 3 indian women, their babies, bags and buckets.


27. Our late night talks in beds covered by mosquito-nets or upper-berths of trains, recovering all the lost time after not having met each other for long.


28. Taking every day (almost! - whenever there could be one) 2 or 3 showers in one go after having put on a thick layer of dust.


29. The colonial outlook of Old Goa and Pondicherry and the Portuguese and French heritage and cultural/ linguistic remains.


30. How good it is to revisit places and see them with less anxious eyes, especially when you have such a great company! :)

Memories from North-India

This is not the the story of Maria (Slovakia), Raquel (Portugal), Anna (Russia), Ahmed (Egipt), Michelle (Brazil) and Eduardo (Brazil) in an unforgettable 2 week trip in the North of India during the last fortnight of Jan'09.

Rajasthan and Punjab have thousands of years of stories to tell themselves, so this is the story of my memories of North/ North-Western India:

1. Thousands of colourful sikh turbants.
   


2. 'Hello! 5 rupees._ ... _ ... Ok. 10 rupees' - said the begging children.
   


3. My Yoga practice in the Rajasthan desert sunset.
   


4. The profuse jewels of arabesque architecture.
   


5. The old man snoring in one of several sleeping trains.
   


6. 'Excuse me, 'mam. Don't miss my shop.'
   


7. The generosity of some and the greediness of others.
   


8. The sun 'heating' the lake in Udaipur.
   


9. The sunrise watching the Maharaja Palace from a distance in Jodhpur, the blue city... and being awake to see it.
   


10. Climbing to the Tiger Fort in Jaipur, city of the pink city.
    


11. Squeezing in my initial Reiki practice in every possible circumstance, in every rickshaw, jeep, waiting room, coffee table.
    


12. The richness of the maharajas and their palaces.
    


13. The sad or surprising adultness in many children.
    


14. Managing loads of people and luggage in auto-rickshaws (three-wheelers).
    


15. No hot shower or no shower at all.
    


16. The con-men in Delhi - outrageous and extremely tiring!
    


17. The Taj Mahal in Agra.
    


18. How handy my blanket in rooms and trains.
    


19. Surprisingly always managing to relax in each of the 8 cities we visited in 10 days.
    


20. Sitting in the sun in front of Lotus Temple, Delhi (Baha'i House of Worship).
    


21. The monk in Jain Temple 'seasoning' all the images of Budha #8, Jaisalmer.
    


22. Feeling cold again - never thought I could miss it!
    


23. The Golden Temple (the 'Meca' of he Sikh Religion), sun-lighted and reflecting in the lake, and its chantings at night in Amritsar, Punjab.
    


24. Young and old Indians wanting to take pictures with/of us - and inevitably getting to our nerves.
    


25. Thousands of stars near the bonfire in the desert, while eating fire-made food prepared by our camel-guides.
    


26. Easier and easier to get into 'alfa' state.
    


27. The 7h bus-trip Jodhpur-Udaipur, almost freezing and with no space for my legs.
    


28. The covered heads of women.
    


29. Being so well taken care for by Rhea and Rhea's family in her house in Delhi.


30. Yoga on the floor of Bangalore airport 3 am first day and in a Delhi Airport chair 9 am last day.

A glimpse of Paradise

Thailand was a glimpse of Paradise.

At least if anyone had told me that in one country you could:

- Have frequent very cheap massage on the beach or any urban corner, but not any massage: Thai Massage, the best I've ever tried. In group, in couble, anyway! Full body, feet, reflexology, oil, etc!

- Eat the best and freshest fruit and 'fruit encounters' ever in every corner of the country, even in the boat, even in the water!

- Have any wish, the weirdest? Be sure of it: Bangkok has it.

- See monkeys, elephants, sharks and snakes.

- Experience an amazingly metropolitan capital, with sky-scratchers and beautiful urban views.

- Eat very cheap and good street food, including the unforgettable banana pancakes.

- Travel easily because - the tourism being the base of their economy - everything is thought of before you wish for it.

- Meet a clean neaty organized environment everywhere.

- Eat very good Thai food in almost every restaurant.

- Have three-wheelers (rickshaws, that they call tuk-tuks there), motor-bikes, side-cars, tri-cycles and cars working as taxis (5 options: not bad, uh?).

- Have sexuality being accepted to such a point that transvestis are not only very well accepted as also very respected in the society, and profuse.

- See sunrises and sunsets from the best locations.

- Walk dark beaches after midnight.

- Visit islands in the north and in the south.

- Party on the beach.

- Buy cheap cool clothes in cool roads.

- Meet all sorts of sandy rocky wavy still-water cristaline dark-watered beaches.

- Do or experience anything out of the ordinary you may ever have wanted to: if you thought of it, it is there, you can do it in Thailand.

- Travel comfortably in an already welcoming colourful smooth Thai flight.

- Walk the roads bear-feet.

- See the most paradisiac things ever:

- from pirate treasure beach discovered after swimming under a pitch dark cave... to snorkelling just to swim together with an amazingly diverse underwater world.

- from the thinest smoothiest whitest sand... to the clearest most cristaline most turquois or transparent ocean waters... to the sweetest coconuts under their trees.

- from watching gigantic ocean stones... to having your boat touch dreamlands of palm-trees and beach.

- from the amazing waterfall site... to having its litters of salty water dropping heavily on your shoulders.

- From feeling like you're sailing the fancy boat with your singing in the front... to having the strong ocean splashes on your face when travelling in a fisherman boat that caught a big current.

- From dancing the maddest ever with hardly any clothes on, on the beach, feet on the sand and the sea, temperature: high, in 2 very important nights: christmas, new years eve... to having some of the most special people in your life by your side all the time.

- From watching golden Reclining Budha... to attending the simple rituals of the budhist spiritual commons.

- From the smiles of all the people... to the life in the floating market, where you watch and buy everything from canoes...

: ... if they told me this and the more I'm not able to tell you all, I'd definitelly say this is what salvation dreams should be all about. :)

Working as a Volunteer

As this part of the amazing journey comes to an end [today], I want to explain to you all briefly what I have been doing as a Volunteer Project Manager for Lalita Shivaram Ubhayaker Foundation for the Arts, where I was very happy:

Ashvasan Foundation (senior citizen welfare) - http://www.ashvasan.org/

• Conception and management of innovative projects; • Fund-raising; • Reporting, optimization and participation in current projects; • Update and management of website and newsletter.

Smriti-Nandan Cultural Centre (art & culture centre and auditorium) - http://www.smritinandan.org/

• Event conception and management; • Communication design and management; • Technical assistance for programming.

22nd Devnandan Ubhayaker Young Music Festival - http://www.smritinandan.org/dusu.html

• Communication design and management; • Merchandising and media management; • Backstage assistance.

Check some pictures below. :)

I am leaving to Thailand today.
I am wishing all of you a lot of peace, faith, tolerance, health, love, ineer and outer discovery, realization, happiness, positive thinking and worthy investment in 2009.

Latest news from the heart

MY CHOICE!

My Choice! has been a life-time experience. Actually building something from scratch especially a social responsible initiative is a great feeling, sharing it with people you love and admire even greater. But then seing the happiness in the children, the actual impact you had on their awareness, the ammount of lives that you touched, the social momentum that you created together with friends just because you'll believed, faught and dedicated... is something out of this world.

Right now we're preparing winning children's trips and the passing of the contents for a company who wants to take our project all over India to as many schools as possible. How incredible is that?

CONCLUSION from 6 months of VOLUNTEER work with Seniors, Art & Culture and Children: IT IS VERY SIMPLE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. IF YOU GENUINELY WANT. It's not a matter of time, but of commitment and belief.

DANCE

Getting back to dancing and teaching was great. I rediscovered my passion for teaching, while the passion for dance was never forgotten. I had decided to leave that part of my professional life aside during this experience, but I guess when you really love something and when that thing and those partaking in it love You in It, it just chases you wherever you go. And that is good. Because WHEN DANCING THAT'S WHEN I FEEL MORE MYSELF.

* By the way: should there be something like I and MYSELF? I am working on this sense of oneness with myself and with all that is.

COUNT-DOWN

The feeling of count-down is in me as my internship is about to finish, my dance classes, my immersion in My Choice!, my basing in Bangalore and with my best friends and myself leaving.

With my Thailand trip coming, meeting Johan in 10 days, Christmas away from family, packing having started, spiritual and natural experiences ahead of me, antecipation of separation from the daily sharing with my new Indian family, strong decisions to be made in face of India's unstable situation, more and more trips being planned and an increasing feeling of SENSE IN LIFE, I am nostalgic about what's about to end but also excited about the new stage about to start.

I am sure to be in the right path and happy to have my parents' support, as always, in whatever I decide. I love you, mãe and pai, for that and for all.