Camping

Why does everyone go camping as Easter?

Looks like fun, right?

We know it’s going to rain, the roads will be chaos and the campgrounds will be packed, yet we still do it.

What is this obsession with ‘getting back to basics’ and embracing our inner Neanderthal albeit with expensive tents and gas cookers?

Having only been camping a few times prior to this Easter, I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing.

The first time I went ‘camping’, it rained and I was stuck in a camper trailer with my family for four days.

The second time, I walked across hot coals because I didn’t think they’d still be hot from the night before.

They were.

That was a long time ago though, so I gave it another chance.

Plus this time there were the added incentives of no family, being old enough to drink and an excellent music festival to attend for three days.

So here are some of the things I learnt I don’t like about camping:

• Everything is on the ground and therefore can be tripped over.
• Tripping over everything.
• Rain.
• Dew.
• Getting changed in a tiny tent while standing on an air mattress, then falling over and briefly being stuck between the tent and the mattress.
• Stealthily being stuck between a tent and a mattress because there are people cooking just outside said tent.
• Black tent ropes.
• How difficult everything is. For example: To make morning coffee:

1. Find gas stove
2. Figure out how to insert gas
3. Figure out if can has gas in it
4. Figure out how to light stove
5. Find lighter
6. Find water to fill kettle “OH WAIT. WE HAVE NO KETTLE.”
7. Drive to Brunswick Heads Antiques and purchase kettle
8. Repeat steps 1-8
9. Wait for kettle to boil
10. Find coffee
11. Find cups that aren’t full of old vodka/damp grass
12. Find milk
13. Move lit gas stove off esky to access milk
14. REALISE IT’S NOW DINNER TIME AND YOU NO LONGER WANT COFFEE.
    

    Damn kettle....

 

 Maybe I need more practice…

Moving on..

It’s time to move on.

I’ve been back for two weeks and six days.

 The backpack has been put away, the last load of washing is drying (as I type now actually…) and there are no signs of any further travel in the foreseeable future.

 Just work..

 Sigh.

So to celebrate (commiserate) here’s the last of the notebook posts.

Even memory lane has to come to an end sometime.

Sigh.

India had been on my list ever since a friend visited a few years and shared some crazy stories.

Nonetheless, pre-departure, I found myself reluctant to shoulder the backpack and head to the airport.

 

It felt like I’d barely been home.

 Which was true, ten days isn’t even enough time for the novelty of routine to wear off.

Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of coming home that really suck (see the next 47 complaint-posts) but there are some things that feel right and as comfortable as an old pair of trackies.

That’s kind of what it comes down to, not trackies unfortunately, but comfort.

Travelling is such a departure from our normal, safe comfort zone.

 Everyone talks about using travel to ‘get out of a rut’ or ‘finding something new’ and I agree completely.

But I think it’s also about finding the comfort in the uncomfortable.

Places that were once just specks on an atlas or exotic-sounding fantasies, places like Saigon or Shanghai or Kassel and now even Mumbai or Varanasi, somehow turn into places you never want to leave.

Places that once seemed alien and daunting become homes away from home.

 Yeah, at first, travel is about getting out of your comfort zone but as you go further, I think, it’s more about expanding your comfort zone.

The world is your rut, so to speak!

Well, that doesn’t sound as good as I wanted it to…

Things I learnt in India

ummm...

 

• Tap water that’s potable by Western standards is the greatest thing to happen to mankind ever.
• Taking sleeping tablets on a train in an effort to “sleep off a flu” is not a good idea if your “flu” turns out to be Dehli belly..
• Do not accept help climbing onto a camel from a camel driver who is looking at you as though you’re a delicious steak dinner.
• Accepting rum in a plastic cup from a tour guide you meet in the desert is not as bad as it sounds.
• Cows aren’t as friendly as they look.
• Goats are as friendly as they look.
• Blogging about naked massages is not the best way to present yourself as a professional freelance journalist…
• An egg curry is never a good idea.

 

The Road to Varanasi

Varanasi. The holy city on the river of death.

It’s almost kind of fitting that this city of a million ends signals the end of our trip.. Almost kind of fitting.. Maybe..

Our road to Varanasi was paved with temples, trains and the Taj but it was the place we were looking forward to the most.

At first, it’s another insane Indian city.

Rickshaws driving on top of each other, cows pondering the chaos, vendors yelling and the constant, ear-splitting sound of a million horns.

Finding the real Varanasi saw us ejected from our rickshaw with our bags and making our way into the labyrinth of tiny streets.

Navigating the narrow, excrement-splattered ally ways, ignoring the calls of ‘Where you from?’ and ‘Namaste!’  until we eventually stumbled out onto the ghats overlooking the river Ganges.

It’s a place where life and death coexist in a colourful mess of noise, mess, religion, touts, boats, goats, bathing, swimming, burning and the omnipresent cows.

So we played tourist.

Up at 5 for a dawn boat ride down the Ganges.

Along with a thousand other camera-wielding tourists, we piled into a boat and got rowed down the river.

The sunrise was absolutely spectacular but the ghats stole the show easily.

Even at that ungodly hour, they were alive and bustling with morning prayers and mourning prayers, bathers, washers, swimmers and absolutely everyone.

Then we were taken up to the burning ghat.

As we pulled in a fire was taking its last breaths, surrounded by priests and mourners all dressed in white.

A teenager with a shaved head stepped towards the ashes, picked up a charred piece and flung it towards us, into the river.

Turns out it was his father’s collarbone.

This truly is the most amazing place.

The Notebook Posts

I’ve been pretty slack with the bloggings recently.

By recently I mean the last month or so…

So forgive the sudden barrage of posts; these are the Indian notebook posts, as transcribed from my disgusting, torn, abused, lassi-stained notebook!

Naked Indian Oil Massage: A Review

If that’s not an attention-grabbing title then I don’t know what is.

Don’t worry though, it’s really not as bad (or good??) as it sounds…

Having been on the road for about three weeks now and also having had some fairly ambitious travel plans fall through, my travel buddy and I decided we needed a treat.

A massage would be perfect, we decided, especially seeing as we can actually afford it here..

So off we went for a traditional, Keralan Ayurvedic massage, very calming and therapeutic, apparently..

We were led into a room by our two, tiny masseuses and told to take our clothes off.

“All good,” I told myself, “They’re just about to bring out those cool massage pyjamas.”

We stood awkwardly in our underwear until my girl, who looked about twelve, rolled her eyes, pointed and said, “Off.”

There was a shared look of mortified panic until my, far braver, travel buddy shrugged her shoulders and said, “Lucky we’re comfortable with each other.”

If we weren’t before, we sure as hell are now.

Bridget’s Travel Tip #42: Standing naked while a small Indian girl puts a paper loincloth on you is a situation that is best avoided..

I felt like Moby Dick… Huge and white..

The next step was climbing onto a table and being basted in oil.

Not the most relaxing massage ever, apart from being naked and oily, it was ticklish too.

I think the only thing worse than lying naked on a table while a small Indian girl stands over you with a pot of hot oil is laughing hysterically while it’s happening.

So the ordeal eventually finished and my travel buddy and I burst into raucous, relieved laughter the second we stepped outside.

“Maybe we should know what things are before we do them,” I suggested.

My travel buddy fervently agrees.

Oh and it turns out, the only thing worse than laughing hysterically while lying on a table while a small Indian girl stands over you with a pot of hot oil is getting the oil out of your hair..

:/

The Cow Philosophy

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I’m in India!

We’ve been here for about a week: visiting friends, eating with friends, visiting family of friends, eating with family of friends, visiting family of family of friends, eating with family of family of friends etc.. As you do in India.

But now we’re been out on our own, starting our desert odyssey through Rajasthan.

Before we set off, our driver, Sanjay, turned to us and said, “Oh maybe not good day for driving, it Holi.”

Being the seasoned Indian travellers that we are, we’d seen the festival of Holi a few days ago in Mumbai.

“No worries, that’s the one where they throw colour at each other, right? All good, it’ll be fine.”

So we got on our way.

We were on the road for about an hour when we reached a group of kids that had put rocks across the road and asked for money to move them.

“Holi festival,” grumbled Sanjay and forked over 10 rupees.

Turns out we weren’t in Mumbai anymore.

Every hundred metres or so, groups of people were singing, chanting and blocking the road with sticks.

Those pesky villagers

There was quite a few but we laughed it off and made it to Kumbalgarrh fort, did the tourist thing for a while.

When we went to continue on, the celebration had stepped up a notch.

By that I mean, the blockades had gotten bigger.. and more expensive.

Considering these blockades would be every hundred metres or so, 100 rupees each time would add up very quickly.

We were stuck, along with two other cars of tourists.

It’s funny how people react in these situations: some get angry, yell in German and call the police, others chat and drink chai.

I think to survive travelling in India, you need to learn from the cows that are absolutely everywhere.

Nothing phases them, not even the odd love tap from a rickshaw, they just keep on going about their business.

Very relaxed, taking things as they come.

So we followed the cow philosophy and ended up going back to where we came from.

We set out this morning, no problems, and here we are in Jodhpur!

The cow philosophy.. Let’s make it a thing!

 

** Shortly after writing this post, I was chased and headbutted and horned by a cow. Seriously. Maybe I need to re-work the cow philosophy..