On India

I'm home and it's lovely.

Despite the pounding rain 24 hours a day and temperatures in the single digits (the single digits!) the comforts of home have quickly reminded me why it's nice to stay in one place for a while. I travelled for 8 months and hit five countries: Hong Kong/China, India, Nepal, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. While each country gave me something the others couldn't, India hit hard and deep as one of the most bazaar places I've been to.

Love it or hate it (and we all know I do both), India gets into your blood. Half in the stone-age and half in the e-age, travelling India is one of the most frustrating and wonderful experiences I've ever had. And now, it seems that only in hind site do I realize just how great it really was. India is the second most populated country in the world with numbers steadily creeping over 1.2 billion, yet India cannot employ or feed its people and the poverty of the country is an overwhelming and looming presence everywhere. Life is based on religion and religion is based on karma - which in everyday real India seems to take a back seat. I met very few people who truly believed in karma outside a temple setting. Karma to most meant bringing coconuts and flowers to Shiva rather then charging a fair price for a handful of lentils.

India is a struggle to both foreigners and locals and I would like you to imagine having to shove and yell your way through a Safeway and barter to the last rupee for absolutely everything. Getting ripped off is a way of life. Screaming about it is too. But besides all the bustle and hassle and brutality, India is extraordinarily beautiful and colourful. Details of belief and history are show from the way women wear their bangles and the colour sari they wear to the intimately carved temples.

Coming from Canada it's hard to understand how such traditional and suppressive history remains prominent today. Although not openly talk of, the struggles of women, children and those of the lower classes is almost the same as it was hundreds of years ago. India's claim to the largest democracy in the world is a facade when women are bought and sold, children are murdered, and personal success is based on who your father or brother knows, rather then ability and skills.

India is raw and thriving and unlike anywhere else in the world. It's addictive and mind-blowing and devastating. I don't think it's possible to understand India, rather it's just a place you accept. The history and customs run deep within the veins of the people and as an outsider you could never understand what it is to be Indian but it's a place where you must go to observe the realness of survival and humanity.