The past two weeks have been filled with such drastically different experiences and emotions. After leaving Varanasi I headed to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and a few other historic sites in the area. By that time I had been alone for over two weeks and wasn’t having very substantial conversations with others on a daily basis so the lack of companionship was starting to take its toll. I was constantly writing in my journal and photographing as often as I could so it felt fulfilling to document my experiences so thoroughly. I knew that I was growing in incomprehensible ways, but I missed the ability to share my perspective with someone nearby or to simply have someone to laugh with.
I think that there’s a lot to be gained by making long solo voyages. You tend to meet a lot more interesting people and you have the freedom to do what you want to do when you want. Traveling alone makes me more confident in my decision making and it convinces me that I’m capable of accomplishing anything if I just set my fears aside. What once seemed challenging can be disintegrated into smaller, more manageable parts that don’t seem as intimidating. It also makes me not scared of being alone. Nevertheless, I was hoping to have met more people to travel with throughout India as I had in China, but I was hopping around in a route that’s not popular among travelers and it’s also not the prime travel season in India.
In Agra I stayed at Tourist Rest House which I would definitely recommend to other travelers. It was in a central location, close to the main tourist attractions and the accommodation was clean and spacious. On my second day there I visited the Agra fort which was constructed 1000 years ago and was inhabited by the Mughal royal families for several centuries. The Taj Mahal was a short walk away and was absolutely marvelous to visit. Once you walk through the large sandstone gates you are greeted by the magnificent and glowing Taj Mahal, which means ‘crowned palace’, in Hindi. When the palace comes into clear view you can’t help but say: “WOW.”
Emperor Shah Jahan had the mausoleum constructed in 1632 for Mumtaz Mahal, his third (and favorite) wife, one year after she passed away. It took 22 years and 20,000 people to construct it. I decided to go with a personal guide, which was definitely worth it as it was only 50 rupis (less than $1) and he explained things to me that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. For most of the tour I was very hesitant because I was afraid that it was a scam and that he would charge me more money after it was over, or that he was going to try to steal my camera. As we spent more time together I eventually began to trust him more and I loosened up. I think that he definitely got commission from the gift shop that he took me to after the tour, but I had planned on buying souvenirs anyway… so we both won. As it cost 14 million dollars in gold coins to build the Taj Mahal, his son Aurangzeb overthrew him for spending so much of the taxpayers money. Shah Jahan had also planned on constructing a second Taj Mahal in black directly behind the marble Taj to house his remains, but his son captured and imprisoned him before his dream was realized. Only the foundation of the second Taj Mahal was constructed so he is also interred in the Taj Mahal beside his wife. Shah Jahan spent the remainder of his life imprisoned in the Agra Fort, which overlooks the Taj Mahal. If someone ever wanted to put me under house arrest I wouldn’t mind living in a glorious palace and gazing out at the Taj Mahal for the rest of my days.
The Taj Mahal had many nuances that could be easily overlooked upon first inspection. On the border of the doors as well as on the inside of the mausoleum are parts of the Koran in seemingly uniform size. It’s an optical illusion because the writing on the bottom is small and then gradually enlarges as it reaches the top so that all of the writing appears the same. My guide also took out a small torch and shined it on the precious stones encased in the filigree gate. The burnt orange glowed like fire. He also ran the torch along the marble to show its translucency. The Taj Mahal is also flanked by two large, identical sandstone buildings: one a mosque and the other a guesthouse, although no guests actually stayed there. It was the most breathtaking building that I’ve ever seen. As I left the grounds during sunset I kept glancing back at the glowing white building, as if it might change or as if one more glance could reveal some imperceptible secret to me.
During my last two days in Agra I visited Itimad-ud-Daulah, the mini Taj Mahal, as well as a nearby town called Fatehpur Sikri. I didn’t spend enough time in the town to give a credible account, but I did spend enough time there to encounter an extremely annoying man who followed me around the village for 30 minutes. He kept trying to help me and telling me that I was going the wrong way (because he was a mind reader and he knew exactly where I wanted to go) when I was just allowing myself to wander and take photos. After repeatedly telling him that I was just taking pictures and that I didn’t need help, he finally followed me into a restaurant where I was considering eating lunch. When I glanced over the menu and decided not to eat there, he appeared from another floor of the restaurant and proceeded to direct me on where to go. I finally snapped at him and screamed: “LEAVE ME ALONE. YOU ARE VERY ANNOYING!” Some local women even gestured for him to leave me alone. I got the impression that he was something of a town dunce. He called me a crazy woman!
One of the things about being a solo woman traveler is that the men are quite relentless. They are always trying to sell you something, or trying to get you to come into their store, or to use their autorickshaw. A common phrase you hear on the streets is: “Yes, madam. How can I help you?” Did I ask you for your help? It seems like you can’t have a conversation with a man on the street without him expecting something from you: whether it be a tip for their advice, a visit to their shop, or a physical encounter. I have gotten very good at ignoring people over the past month. It’s been helpful that people keep thinking that I’m Indian because I think that it saves me from a lot of additional harassment, but it’s gotten annoying to have people ask me 5 times a day if I’m Indian and then for them to be surprised when I say that I’m American. When I explain to them that I’m half black and half white they say, ” Ok, so you’re half American.” They don’t realize that America is a country of immigrants. They think that it’s like England where white people are the native inhabitants. That just shows me that America needs to do a much better job of displaying its diversity in the media.
After spending a few days in Agra I took a train to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is known as the most culturally rich state in the country. The desert background inspired colorful architecture, textiles and an obsession with jewelry. On my first night I was eating at a restaurant when I met Peter, a Polish jewelry maker with long dreads who had been living in the city for the past few months. He told me about his experience at the nearby Vipassana Meditation Center with a sparkle in his eyes like a wanderer through the desert who had finally found a watering hole. You could tell that the course had impacted him in a positive way. Vipassana meditation is one of the oldest forms of meditation in India. It was taught by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) 2,500 years ago. He spoke to me about the non-religious nature of the meditation. It simply allows you to see things in an objective manner. Humans are always concentrating on pleasant things, dwelling on unpleasantness, or fantasizing about the past or the future. Vipassana aims to retrain the habit patterns of the mind, which constantly craves an experience that is not the present reality. During the course you must take a noble vow of silence and meditate for 10 1/2 hours a day.
Traveling by myself I spend so much time in my own head: replaying conversations that I had with someone two months earlier or making plans for when I return to the United States. It can be such a challenge to catch yourself when you’re fantasizing about the past or the future and to simply concentrate on being satisfied with the here and now. There are many Vipassana centers throughout the world and the course has also been taught in prisons in India and purportedly has received positive results for reform. As there was a course beginning just a few days later, I decided to sign up to try to make the most of the remainder of my solo voyage. As per Peter’s suggestion, I stayed in Tony’s Guest house on Station Rd and MI road, which was the most personable lodging experience that I’ve had since I’ve been in India. I felt like I was at a home stay as the hotel was in the house that Tony had grown up in and he treated each of us as if we were guests in his home. The hotel had a garden rooftop with a couple of hammocks where people would just hang out. He would serve free tea and chai in the mornings and there were also jam sessions at night with saxophone players, a bassist and tabla player.
On my first full day in Jaipur I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a ride from a woman who lived next door and so that I could go jogging in the central park. I was afraid that running as a single woman would be unsafe in India, but it’s okay if you do it in the early morning in a park area. Afterwards I ate breakfast with some other travelers at the guesthouse and everyone seemed very interesting. Solo travelers always have their own stories. There was a girl whose family was originally from Shanghai but had grown up in Brazil. She was living at an ashram in Jaipur. There was also a guy from Sudan who had been living in Sinai for the past years, playing music and doing sound engineering. Later on in the afternoon I visited Galta Ji, the monkey temple, which was in the outskirts of the city. I tried to take the local buses as often as I could while I was in Jaipur, which is something that I was hesitant to do in other cities. Taking the bus is so much cheaper and more interesting. I like doing things the way that locals do it or eating places where they eat. It offers me a much more intimate perspective of the city. The Galta Ji was one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in India so far. It was surrounded by the mountains and because it was in the outskirts of the city it was shanti shanti (peaceful). Galta Ji is a temple that is several hundred years old and is adorned with paintings. It was so fun to take pictures of the monkeys that were hanging around the temple. The surrounding area had a lot of old abandoned structures that had become their home. They were basically running the show. It was so interesting to see them interact- I saw characteristics in them that reminded me of humans. I kept thinking: “I know someone who does that!” or “that monkey’s face reminds me so much of this guy’s.”
On my last couple of days before I headed to the meditation center I visited Hawa Mahal, a pink sandstone 5-storey built in 1799. It served as a structure for the royal ladies to have a prime vantage point for festivals and mundane city life watching. Jaipur is known as the pink city because all of the buildings in Old town were painted pink in the 1800s to welcome Prince Edward of Wales. On my last day in the city I visited Nahargarh, a fort constructed in the 1730s which offers a great view of the city. While touring the fort I encountered a security guard who started telling me about the history of the fort. When I told him that I didn’t want a guide he insisted that he wasn’t one. I let him show me around to the different rooms for a few minutes and then he directed me to go down the stairs so that we could see the bottom level. As we walked down the narrow stairs I stepped to the side so that he could go first because he kept awkwardly squeezing himself onto the same stair as me. He reached out to rub my back and when I told him that he didn’t have to touch me he asked “why not?” I was slightly shocked at his behavior because I felt that I was being very cautious in my dealing with men here, but I think that it’s a reminder that you can’t always predict who will try to take advantage of you. I think that some men here tend to get out of control when they have an unplanned interaction with a woman because the sexes are so divided here. Women and men can’t have a platonic relationship unless they are friends with the family. Women and men are separated to protect women, but I think that it’s counteractive because when some men have the opportunity to have a more intimate connection with a woman (which is so rare for them), they will take it even if it’s unwanted. Although I know that these things can happen anywhere, it honestly makes me glad that I grew up in America.
I arrived at the Vipassana meditation center on April 24th and was instructed that I couldn’t leave until the morning of the 11th day, upon course completion. I was looking forward to the meditation because I was feeling overwhelmed by the insanity of the city and was in need of some quiet time where I could totally decompress. During the course we all took a vow of noble silence, which meant that we could not talk or communicate in any way during the 10 days so that we could meditate as if we were in complete isolation; however, most of the Indian women continued to talk the entire time. We also could not engage in any form of entertainment such as books or writing. These were considered diversions as we were to completely delve into the meditation. We were completely separated from the men, but we meditated in the same room, on different sides. We were given modest accommodation of a single room with a bathroom. The course followed a strict schedule of waking up at 4 a.m. every morning and heading to the meditation hall for group meditation until 6:30 a.m. when we ate a modest vegetarian breakfast. We then spent the rest of the day meditating with a break for lunch at 11:30 a.m., as well as couple of hour break throughout the day for rest or walking. We were not served dinner as we were not to meditate on a completely full stomach, but we were served tea and a small snack at 6:30 p.m.
Later on in the night we watched an informational video featuring Goenka, the modern-day teacher of Vipassana meditation who is responsible for making it internationally known. The discourses were quite interesting and funny. Goenka spoke of his own personal experience with Vipassana meditation and also gave us instructions on how we should meditate and what we might be experiencing. He said many things that were simple truths: that people are in control of their own aversions and cravings which generates misery or happiness. Until we are able to retrain our mind not to respond to these sensations then we will continue down a cycle of our own misery. People are always unsatisfied with the present moment so they think about something in the past that made them happy or they dwell on something negative that someone else said. We plan for the future to avoid concentrating on our current experience. He also shared many anecdotes to better help us understand Vipassana meditation, or the teaching of Buddha. One day a powerful Brahman man (the priestly caste) came to Buddha’s meditation center with the aim to kill him. He was unhappy that his entire family was meditating and he felt that it would take away their Hindu piety. Buddha asked the man if people ever came to his house presenting gifts that he didn’t want. The angry Brahman responded: “Of course, and I give it back to them.” Buddha said ” You have come to me with your present that I do not want, so you can also can keep that. I don’t want it.” When we think that an injustice has transgressed we take this present and we continue to roll in the negativity, instead of denying to accept it in the first place. When someone says something malicious to you, that is their own problem. That comes from misery within them. You do not have to react to their ill-will and allow them to spread their misery to you as well. The thing that struck me the most about the teaching was the simple truth that happiness and misery is within all of us. If you get angry and dwell on something that someone else said, you are simply using that person as a personification of your own misery. The meditation trains you to feel pleasant or unpleasant sensations and not to respond to them; but to simply observe them objectively and to realize their impermanence. This too will pass.
Not talking for 10 days wasn’t the most challenging part of the meditation: it was the extreme pain in my legs and back of sitting for 10 1/2 hours a day and also trying not to daydream that was difficult. So what do you think about when you cannot speak to anyone for 10 days and your eyes are closed for 10 hours a day? You think about everything that’s ever happened to you in your entire life. Non-sequitur thoughts would appear totally at random and then an image would pop up of the future. It made me sad to think of my family getting old. I thought of where I wanted to see myself in 10 years from now. Maybe settled down with a house and a partner. In what state? In what country? Memories spanned back to experiences that I hadn’t thought about in years: going camping with my family when I was four years old, going hiking in Yosemite a few years ago, getting sick on my fifth birthday, going on an excursion to Portland, the photograph of my great grandmother (the one where her eyes seemed to follow you to every corner of the room) hanging up in my grandmother’s house and wondering where that had gone. Songs that I hadn’t heard in years popped up in my head and I tried to remember the words. I thought about my family, all of my friends, my past lovers and my enemies. I would chuckle thinking about something a friend had said years ago.
It was amazing that my thoughts seemed to have no pattern, but would weave throughout my memories like a poorly edited film. It was extremely frustrating. I felt completely out of control of my own mind. I just wanted to scream! In the first couple of days we were instructed to do nothing but concentrate on the regularity of our breath. This was the most difficult for me because I wanted to attach some mantra to help me focus, but we were instructed not to create any verbalization or image to help the process. We had to simply accept the reality of our breath. On the third and fourth day our concentration expanded to focus on the sensations on our nose and then every sensation that occurred on the area between the bottom of our nose and our upper lip. During the first few days I felt like I was going to go crazy. I kept thinking: ‘I’m not mentally strong enough for this. I’m supposed to clear all of my thoughts and think about nothing but a sensation that crops up on my nose for 10 hours a day!? I might snap. I might literally lose it in here.’ Then I would come to my senses and realize that the generation of negativity was only making me more excited and less likely to concentrate. If I had been told that I could leave within the first few days I probably would have left. However, by the fourth day we started doing actual Vipassana meditation, which was much more interesting for me. We would concentrate on every sensation that occurred on different parts of our body beginning from the crown of the head and going down to the toes. I would scan my forehead, eyebrows,temples, cheeks, nose, lips, chin and then work my way down my body piece by piece. If I could not feel the sensation in a certain part of my body then I would focus on that part for a couple of minutes until I got a tickle or I could feel the air from the fan brush against the body part.
As the days progressed we would scan through the parts of our body faster in a free-flow manner, which created a tingling sensation that would flow through my body and I would follow it like a trail of light. We were instructed not to move our position for 3 hours out of the day, which meant that we would have to simply observe the shooting pain in our leg and back and not respond to it. The point of the meditation is to simply observe the sensations and to not develop aversions or cravings towards them. Surprisingly the pain was often uplifted after a minute of concentrating on the spot in an objective manner instead of attaching the emotion of unhappiness to it. Every experience in life is impermanent. On our last few day of the course we were given our own small meditation cells devoid of light. It was a small room with a pillow on the floor with a tiny vent in the ceiling where you could hear the wild peacocks around the center cawing and the monkeys chattering. I actually preferred staying in my cell because it was easier to concentrate in the complete darkness without anyone else around.
On my 7th day at the centre I was walking down a path to our rooms after meditation when I spotted a cow. I stopped in my tracks as I wasn’t expecting it there, but began to cautiously tip-toe past it so that I could get to the other side. The cow then bucked it’s head and charged at me with it’s horns! I screamed as loudly as I could and ran the other way down the path. A woman opened up her arms to hug me and tried to console me in Hindi, but I was so shocked that I nearly cried. Being in complete isolation the interaction seemed all the more alarming to me.
After the course was over I felt lighter and more refreshed, but the words couldn’t quite come to me as to why. It felt awkward to speak. Everyone was smiling and laughing when the course was over as we spoke to the people we had been living so closely to but had not spoken to for the past 10 days. We fumbled on our words and smiled gleefully like a giddy schoolgirl speaking to her crush for the first time. Overall the course was very interesting, but extremely challenging- harder than I thought that it would be. It reminded me that I’m still very far from perfect, but in a way I don’t feel as anxious about that now. I worry about what others think of me and I expect too much from people sometimes. These aren’t things that I’m trying to deny, but it’s something that I can continue to try to work on. Right now I don’t feel like the course transformed me in remarkable ways, but I think that it’s a process that I’d be willing to give another chance.
Right now I’m staying in Jodhpur, which is where I’ll be until tomorrow when I take a night train to Jaisalmer. There I’ll do the camel safari and sleep on the sand dunes! After Jaisalmer I’ll head to Udaipur, Amhedabad and then I’ll lounge on the beach in Goa for a few days like a G. I can’t believe that I only have a couple of weeks left in India! It’s been quite a ride.
bridemarriedtoamazement 