Sri Lanka

 

     I’ve departed from India after 3 ½ months, and arrived in tranquil Sri Lanka. India turned my head inside out. I’m not sure what’s happened to me, but I feel different, maybe a little bit weirder. Life there is on a whole other wavelength. On quite a few occasions friends and I wandered wide-eyed back to our hotel feeling drugged, a result of absolute fascination and disbelief. It’s easy to end up wandering corridors in your mind, feeling like you’re in a labyrinth, trying to sort through all you’ve experienced and make sense of it only to wind up at a dead end. It has cured me (for now) of the very western need to always have answers and know exactly what’s going on, because most of the time that’s an impossible request in India. It’s a freeing feeling to know that you’re not in control. You can just let things happen and experience them, rather than stressing out over trying to manipulate the outcome.

A lot of not knowing what’s going on has to do with communication. I think it’s almost more difficult to get the message across in a country where English is widely spoken, but not the native language, because you both believe you can communicate and don’t rely on sign language and drawing pictures for each other. In India most people speak English, kind of, but they mainly speak it with each other so it’s morphed into a Hindi / local dialect / English mash up that comes through as a jumble of sounds where every six words or so seem like they could be English and you end up not getting any of it. Plus the way they think of the words is conceptually different. You can have a conversation where you’re hearing all the phrases correctly but it’s still making no sense, like this conversation I had with the guys working in my hotel the other night:

Me: Can I order food right now?

Front desk guy: Yes sir, room service is there.

Me: May I have a masala dosa?

Room Service guy: Yes sir, your room number?

Me: 213

Room Service guy: Sorry sir, kitchen is closed

Me: But you just said I could order food.

Front desk guy: No masala dosa, only food.

Me: Masala dosa is food.

Front desk guy: No masala dosa.

Me: What food do you have?

Front desk guy: Only fried rice.

Sometimes even trying to get a simple yes or no is out of the question. I stopped in a DVD shop to ask the man if there was a pre-paid auto stand nearby and he said “Hmm… pre-paid auto…” and started scanning the titles of the DVDs on the wall. It’s funny and fun, and the vibe in India is almost always lighthearted, even when they’re trying to rip you off and you both know it.

After I stopped being shocked by how unscrupulous the rickshaw drivers are I could appreciate what they were doing for what it actually was. They’re playing the numbers while possibly making a few extra bucks and refining their game in a day of schlepping back and forth that would otherwise be drudgery. Once I started to look at it through their eyes I began to improve upon my techniques in haggling too and it became a lot more interesting. I stopped asking for the price at the start and would wait until I arrived at my destination then hand them the amount I knew it was suppose to cost. Of course they would protest and ask for double, but most of the time when I stuck to my price or even got a little uppity about it they would just end up giggling and take the cash.

Giggles or not, I much prefer the pre-paid auto stand over arguing about the price, but even then they’ve devised their tricks. I asked a couple of guys where I could find the stand and they said, “This is it!” It was just two guys standing by a pole, so I knew it was not the place but decided to humor them and asked for the rate to my destination. I already knew it was a Rupees 50 ride. One of the guys pulled out this tattered and laminated sheet of paper and scrolled down it with his finger to the name of the place I had asked for and said, “350 Rupees.” I could not control myself and burst out laughing, adding “You’re crazy!” They thought it was funny too and were cracking up as I walked the fifty feet to the real pre-paid auto stand.

Usually I take the bus or just walk around a city, as I have unlimited time for lollygagging, but in Bangalore I was on a mad search for a new pack. I recently met up with a friend from LA and he was carrying one medium sized bag. I eyed it jealously as I lugged around a 70-liter bag on my back and a 26-liter bag on the front, sweating and heavy, crabby about it. I spent a lot of time mentally packing my stuff into his bag, knowing I could fit my life in there, if I could just figure out where to put my electronics. I became obsessed and once I arrived in Bangalore I spent every waking hour riding rickshaws all over town looking for a bag that would change my life; big enough for everything to fit on my back, small enough to discourage traveling packrat mentality. After a week straight of searching I managed to lighten my load by 30 liters and ten pounds or more. I’m now carrying 19.3 kilos on my body when I move from place to place. That’s 42.55 pounds. Twenty pounds of that (9.1 kilos) is what I need to maintain the blog and website, chargers, cords, camera, lenses, laptop etc. It feels really good to be lighter, but I keep wondering what would it be like if I could shave off that other twenty pounds of weight from my bag. Would it also be a weight off my mind if I could cancel out the responsibilities to report back, the never-ending obsession to find interesting images and compose words, and free myself from the endless search for Internet connection? It would probably be pretty freeing in a lot of ways, but without purpose I might just end up as a ratty haired, stinking vagabond. Maybe that’s next level consciousness. I don’t think I’m ready for it, so I’m gonna keep carrying all this crap around and hope that it matters somehow.

I’ve said farewell to India and now I’ve got to try and wrap my mind around Sri Lanka. There are a lot of similarities between the two, but Sri Lanka is much cleaner, less busy, the hospitality is a bit gentler, and the prices are way higher. In a day or two I’m going to one of their many wildlife sanctuaries, elephant and leopard sightings are on my To Do list. Wish me luck. See you soon.