fellow travelers

rishikesh, india

i've always walked a delicate line between loner and gregarious, with myers-briggs putting me a few yards on the introverted side of the field. i suppose this means that i have a certain selectivity that extroverts may not. since i am comfortable alone, if found in the presence of others it is usually because i enjoy their company. there have been times where i have been alone not of my own choosing (see: high school, much of), but for the more than two months that i have been trekking through africa and india i have been without arranged company. solo. independent. alone.

while i may not have been part of a backpack-toting herd hopping from station to station, that doesn't mean that i have literally been alone. every breakfast that starts out solo, every train ride that starts with gazing out the window, or every lazy afternoon with a good book tends to be pleasantly interrupted by gentle taps on the shoulder. it has been one of the highlights of this trip to have strangers, locals, come up to practice their english or help me practice my french. they want to hear my opinion of obama and offer condolences for michael jackson. they often ask how tall i am and many times just want to hear my accent. sometimes the conversation will last for an hour and others it will just be a moment. they always, always wish me well. what i do know is that this would not be possible were i in a group. for one, groups tend to be insular. for another, they can be intimidating to locals (who may already be somewhat intimidated by westerners).

tonight will mark a minor sea change. delhi will be the site of a reunion with a pair of buddies from brooklyn with whom i will travel for the next ten to twelve days. i am besides myself with excitement. i can't wait to catch up with good people, share all the (inappropriate) jokes that pop into my head, process everything that we see, and speak without having to translate american cultural references. it will feel nice to know other people and to have them know me. i have to admit that part of me is nervous as to whether i can play well with others after so much time alone in the sandbox. however, another potential worry does not exist. knowing what i know of taylor and peter, i don't see us ignoring locals or bypassing unique experiences to sit around and have beers. while i have definitely missed all of my great friends and family, i have looked with sympathy and not jealousy each time i've seen a table of four europeans or israelis laughing it up, near entirely ignorant that india lay just beyond their table.

move over rats and snakes
...and make room for monkeys. i am terrified, petrified, catatonic with fear at our closest cousins on the phylogenetic tree. the other day i went to the remains of maharashi mahesh, the ashram where the beatles stayed 40 years back that has been slowly reclaimed by the forest since its closing in 1997. with nary a human soul on the grounds with me, i walked back under a covered canopy filled with monkeys hopping from branch to branch, alongside monkeys frolicking on the tree trunks and nearby vegetation, and past a few chasing one another across and through my pathway. how i did not soil myself can only be attributed to divine intervention.

testify!
i believe in the cleansing power of the ganga, because it worked for me the first time. what happened: i stepped into a pile of sacred shit and vishnu's river worked its magic in no time. skeptics may abound, but consider me not in their ranks.