As our plane comes in for a landing in Delhi, we witness Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, from the sky. Fireworks explode around us, a spark of color alarmingly close to the wing of our jet. We descend into the lights and smoke and crowds of this city of 25 million people, and enfold into a tradition that dates back thousands of years.
Our driver meets us at baggage claim. Dressed in his crisp white shirt, starched black pants and shiny black shoes, he greets us, “Welcome to India. Happy Diwali.” We are each decorated with a necklace of marigolds and he whisks our jet-lagged bodies through the fog and smoke, exploding fireworks and honking horns, to our hotel in the heart of the city. This is how our journey begins.
For nearly four weeks we become several of India’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, visitors traveling from north to south and west to east in a country that has a landmass that is 40% of the lower 48 states. There are days that are a blur to me, my senses overloaded with color and sounds, chaos and beauty, diverse languages, the smell of cardamom and curry, and scented oils intermingled with the stench of rotting garbage. An invasion of the senses and a test to what I consider my personal space.
Traveling through old cities by rickshaw, we find ourselves in a sea of humanity—cars and scooters, pedestrians, motorcycles, trucks—all swimming along bumpy and dusty roads as we navigate around people, sleeping dogs, piles of discarded trash, pot holes, cows and goats, and the constant blaring of horns. Vehicles pass on both the right and the left. Traffic signals and the lines on the road are merely suggestions.
On a train ride from Delhi to Agra we see India from our train car. In the train station, people sleep on newspapers as we board the express into first class. From our air conditioned car we are served lime juice, biscuits and tea. As we sit in relative comfort our train pushes past farmland and rice fields and then past a current of tarps and make-shift housing. The slums border the train tracks. The air is thick and hazy from cooking fires and piles of burning garbage. Some families squat in small circles, cows tethered to a nearby post or tree. Others are bathing from buckets of water or defecating in small patches of earth separated by the train tracks. For many, each day seems to be about survival—eating, having a place to sleep, working—finding what is needed to sustain life. But what do I really know about this kind of struggle?
Just before 7 am the morning pushes its way past the train. A blood orange sun climbs up the horizon and hangs in the smoky sky above us. I feel my own discomfort and the paradox of people and place, of affluence and poverty, an age-old dilemma, yet something I will choose to wrestle with and bump up against for the coming weeks of our journey.
We finally arrive at the Taj Mahal, an ivory white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna River in the Indian city of Agra. Commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shan Jahan, it houses the remains of his favorite wife. The Taj Mahal is known as the jewel of Muslim art in India and is considered one of the most beautiful monuments in the world.
This begins one of many tours and excursions that will show us this country’s famous palaces and temples-- their beauty, wealth and architecture of a magnitude that is mind boggling—and again we witness the contrast, the layers of affluence woven next to India’s poverty—India’s history unfolding before our eyes.
From cities of 25 million to “towns” of over 1 million inhabitants, the density of humankind presses around me like a skin tight sweater, a warm embrace, an overcrowded elevator. Even this is impossible to fully describe.
As I reflect on my time in India, two questions sit with me. Questions that I was asked by friends and family when we returned. How did India make you feel? And what surprised you most about your travels? Here is how I will answer them.
During our time in India, we traveled to the ancient city of Varanasi, a place of temples and dwellings along the banks of the Ganges River—and dating back to the 12th century BC. First in early evening, and then again at sunrise, we walked out to the Ghats, steep walls of steps descending to the river. Our guide took us to a small tour boat, where we drifted out into the river so that we could watch the ceremonies along the shore. As we floated several hundred yards from the river banks, we passed giant pallettes with large stacks of wood used to fuel the fiery flames of several large fires. It is here, for thousands of years, where the bodies of loved ones are cremated after they die.
According to Hindu tradition, the Ganges River is sacred to all Hindus. Followers of this religion, one of the world’s largest, believe that when a person dies and their remains touch the river, they are assured eternal salvation. In this place where we watch ceremonies unfold, people cremate and return the ashes of their family members to the Ganges and spread them in its waters.
In the morning, when we return to our boat, the air is damp and a low fog hangs over the river and the cities buildings. Singing and chanting echo from the shore and we can see early risers along the banks of the river, bathing themselves with soap and dunking 5 times in and out of the river. Washer women and men beat clothes along stone slabs and steps, and dogs chase one another across the upper reaches of the shore,near a patchwork of sheets being hung out to dry.
Our boat drifts through the murky water, and we watch the debris that floats by, the particles and small remains of cremated bodies alongside plastic bottles, garbage, a bloated dog and other debris. Drifting on this ancient river, I can’t help but think of my own mother, and the process of losing her so suddenly last spring, and the rituals we shared as a family as we said goodbye. Maybe it is eternal optimism, or the desire to find some kind of order and meaning in a world that houses our lives on earth for such a short time, but it is here I feel the connection of thousands of people, across time, dating back thousands of years, and happening right now. And perhaps too, my mom is part of this connection, not here on the Ganges, but in the wild river basin where we spread her ashes in the summer in the Rocky Mountains.
India made me feel connected—to humanity, to my own life, to all of life. And that is what also surprised me.
Amidst the chaos, the diversity, the messiness of life here, there was a rhythm that I had not expected, a sense of aliveness and realness-something I couldn’t have imagined or anticipated. A rhythm of movement, so strong, in the most crowded of places. It was in the busy streets, snarled with traffic and millions of people. I found I could move with the current, not getting totally swept away by it. Real or imagined, this required trusting that there was some meaning in the disorder and it also required having faith that as we ducked and weaved and stepped to avoid bumping into one another, that we would actually get across the street, or wherever we were each headed, in this tide of living. Perhaps we are all not that different after all.
In India I was struck by the similarities as much as the differences among people and communities. India continues to navigate the rise and fall of livelihoods. Things change with the times. Steeped in history and ritual and tradition, India meets the challenges of a modern age. There lies the paradox—traditions competing with the inevitable changes that modern life brings. From the ancient caste system to a burgeoning middle class, from recent demonetization--an attempt by the government to deal with corruption-- to the impact of technology and the digital age—all touching the lives of citizens across this incredibly diverse sub-continent.
So, what surprised me most about my travels? In his book, Following Fish, a story about the fishing industry along India’s west coast, author Samanth Subramanian sums up a feeling that sticks with me. He says, “travel does nothing better than swing a wrecking ball in even your most meager expectations. A place is always hotter or wetter or colder or drier than you suspect it will be. People will always turn out to have stories different from the ones you set out to hear; a society will, when you think you’ve got it all figured out, always turn itself inside-out like a sock, to reveal its frayed threads, it’s seams, it’s patterns of stitch work. The real process of discovery works not by revealing things you knew nothing about, but by revealing how wrong you were about what you did know.”
Incredible India, thank you for taking me in.
--Dawn