I can’t believe I’m writing this – but this is my last post about India.
3 months, 240 chais, 4 weddings, 6 states, and countless memories from the sublime to the absurd. It’s hard to summarize and nothing I come up with quite captures it perfectly, but here are a few things that come to mind –
Empowering. Wild. Surreal. And the biggest, bestest ass kick of my life.
I’m sure it’s easy for you to read this blog and see pictures and think wow, rachel is living in a magical indian fairy land where everything is perfect and there’s always hot chai. That’s what happens now with social media.
You don’t post pictures of the long, hot train station wait where you looked like absolute hell and had diarrhea but there was no one to watch your bag so you had to squat with 30 pounds on your back and it was the one time you forgot to pack toilet paper. Or when you felt so deeply lonely that your heart felt like a ton of concrete – and there was nothing to do except hold yourself and cry – and hope that when you woke up in the morning, life would feel a little more possible.
But that’s travel. And that’s India. And that’s what has made my experience so special.
Because I did it. And not only did I go through the motions and check all the bucket list boxes – but I had a hell of a wonderful time.
Like I said – the biggest, bestest ass kick.
But before I get too sappy and philosophical (even while using phrases like bestest ass kick) – let’s back up.
After soul surfin in Kerala, I spent a week in Mumbai (also known as Bombay).
And, my god. What a city. Really, truly one of the best cities I’ve ever been too. Even up there with New York! I could really see myself spending some time here.
I wasn’t even planning on going to Mumbai but, as always – there’s a story.
As I was checking out of my hostel in Udaipur, a really nice girl came to take my bunk – Mara from Miami. We got to chatting and it turned out she was planning to head to South India at the same time so we exchanged numbers. A few weeks later, she invited me to Mumbai to hang with her and her friends. I said YES.
And I’m so glad I did, because Mara is one of the most genuinely kind people I’ve ever met.
Exhibit A: I flew from Trivandrum to Mumbai, and Mara and her friends surprised me by picking me up from the airport (which is an hour outside the city). Seriously.
This girl who I had met for all of 10 minutes picked me up from the airport just because she thought it would be nice.
Isn’t that amazing?
I stayed in a neighbourhood called Colaba, which is super trendy and artsy. Treelined cobblestone streets, art galleries, street markets, delicious cafes with beautiful extensive chai menus, and minutes away from sparkly seaside running paths that I went to every morning.
I met so many truly kind people in this city that I almost can’t believe it.
This started with Mara and grew when I decided to have tea at a cafe around the corner from my hostel.
When I walked in, there were only two other women there, each sitting at different tables. As I ordered my rose chai, the woman next to me immediately introduced herself. Her name is Meenal and she was born and raised in Mumbai. We instantly clicked and chatted for about 15 minutes before exchanging numbers.
When she left, I had a huge smile on my face and went along drinking my rose chai.
Then the next woman started chatting me up. Her name is Marcelle, and she is originally from Congo but grew up in France and now lives in Edmonton. She was in Mumbai for work and had two days of free time ahead of her.
Marcelle became my Bombay Fairy Godmother. When she was my age, she was also a backpacker, and she made it very clear that I was not to pay for a single thing while we were together. The only thing I had to do was pass on this act of kindness when I was her age to another young traveller.
True Fairy Godmother material.
Marcelle and I really connected and had the most wonderful time together. We had many fascinating conversations about spirituality, travel and family. We went mango and masala shopping in the bustling Crawford Market, ate at yummy restaurants, went for long walks, and got embarrassingly buzzed off half a glass of white wine (and giggled all the way home).
Mumbai is the heart of Bollywood so naturally we had to investigate. And it didn’t disappoint! People are super vocal in the audience, and there’s even an intermission to stretch your legs and refill your popcorn.
We saw two films – Baaghi and Sairat.
Baaghi was everything you want a good Bollywood film to be. Drama, romance, martial arts, giant full-blown dance numbers, beautiful people. Think Karate Kid meets West Side Story. It has the wackiest story line with hilariously dramatic sound effects and the most beautiful male lead you could ever imagine, whose real name is Tiger. Marcelle and I spent the entire film squealing in our seats and laughing because there was simply nothing else to do when this dude took off his shirt and started harmonizing.
This was my favourite dance number from the film. And this is Tiger’s love song (it’s simply too much).
See what I mean?
Sairat was a very different experience. It had some of that Bollywood cheesy charm toward the beginning – but got very heavy very quickly, as it told the story of two young lovers from different castes. Their connection is so palpable and you instantly fall in love with their love. But because of their different castes, they flee to escape death at the hands of their families. They start a life together in the slums of Mumbai, and the film beautiful explores the complexity of domestic violence, slum life and young love in an incredibly redeeming, human way. They build a beautiful life together out of nothing, and just when you think it’s going to have a bollywood happy ending, their two-year-old child discovers them murdered in cold blood by the girl’s family – 10 years after fleeing home.
I could hardly speak after. I took a long walk home after to try and digest it all. But there’s no digesting that.
Ultimately, I am so happy that I saw Sairat, and I would recommend it to anyone. I really believe in the power of film as a catalyst for change and compassion – so I’m happy that stories like this are becoming visible and commercial.
On a slightly lighter note, I also spent some lovely time with Cafe Angel #2 – Meenal.
It turns out that she had a business trip to Barcelona that was cancelled just as Cafe Angel #1 (Marcelle) was leaving so we were able to hang out during the day. We had coffee, and she hosted me one afternoon for lunch and Ellen DeGeneres in her air conditioned apartment. It was perfect.
Meenal is such a bright spirit with the best laugh and kindest smile. She also has the same dry sense of humour that I do, so it made watching Ellen together super entertaining. Meenal is 6 months pregnant and I know she’s going the make the most wonderful mother. We were supposed to have breakfast together on my last morning but I ended up catching a terrible cold, so I wasn’t able to get a picture of us together. But Meenal, if you’re reading this, I am so grateful to have met you and I can’t wait to see pictures of your little one in a few months!
And finally (of course), I hung out lots with Mara.
We did two tours together, both of which were fantastic: a bike tour of Mumbai and a walking tour of the Dharavi Slum. The bike tour was a great way to see the city, and the Dharavi tour in particular was incredible because it dashed away any problematic assumptions I had of slum life.
Mumbai has a population of 22 million – 11 million of whom live in one of the city’s 2,000 slums.
Dharavi is the largest slum in Asia, with over 1 million residents, and is by far the biggest in Mumbai (it’s also where Slumdog Millionaire is set). Before this tour, I assumed slums were where poorest people lived – and while, of course, there is stark poverty in a slum, people who reside there are actually the most-well-off of those who are not-well-off. (The poorest people can’t afford to live in a slum so they sleep on the street.) It costs about 4,000 Indian rupees/month to live in Dharavi, and it’s actually quite a safe place. The rate of crime is extremely low because there are so many people around all the time. Our guide, Jena, lived there and had really great things to say about it.
We visited a rooftop, walked through streets as narrow as me, and visited factories where they burn plastic and metal with no safety gloves or masks. It’s wild.
We weren’t allowed to take any pictures on the slum tour but I was able to get some on the rooftop where residents couldn’t see.
I loved getting to know Mara. She has a bunch of friends who live in Mumbai who were incredibly generous and welcoming to me, most especially Bhavesh and Niyati. What a seriously kind group of people.
Mara actually met Bhavesh through Instagram. Their friendship started casually with a few likes here and there, and then got serious through private messaging. One thing led to another and Mara and Bhavesh ended up travelling together for a month through North India with Mara’s boyfriend. And Bhavesh set Mara up with his friend Niyati for her stay in Mumbai so she wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel.
So there we were – me, a girl who I had met for 10 minutes in a hostel in Udaipur, her friend who she met on Instagram and had only met in person one month earlier, and his friend who knew none of us but was keen and kind.
What a world.
(Also, I totally get why Mara loved Bhavesh’s Instagram – it’s amazing! @bangdiwalas).
Bhavesh and Niyati took Mara and me in like family. They hosted us for a Bollywood night at Niyati’s apartment. When I caught a nasty cold, Niyati made me some brilliantly spicy cardamom tea. Bhavesh drove me to my hostel at 1AM so I wouldn’t have to go alone, and he dropped Mara and me off at the airport so we wouldn’t have to pay for a cab. I met Bhavesh and Niyati for chai one afternoon, where they treated me to blueberry cheesecake and made me a mix CD for my trip. One night they picked me up and we went for midnight roadside kebabs (where you park your car in a lot, the waiters come to you, and everyone eats standing up using the car roof as a table!). And right before I left, Niyati gave me some beautiful handmade Diwali candles and a card so I can celebrate the Festival of Lights in Canada.
It’s no exaggeration to say meeting these people reaffirmed my faith in humanity.
Mara and I then flew back to Delhi together for my last few days in India.
As I mentioned, I caught a nasty cold in Mumbai so I was pretty knocked out for the week. Of course, I left the Taj Mahal to the last minute and couldn’t leave India without seeing it, so I dragged my sick and tired butt to the train station at 4AM to catch a train to Agra.
It turns out Bhavesh’s friend, Sharma, lives one train stop away from Agra and offered to give me a tour. I gave him my train/seat number, so he found me in my sleeper berth, and we spent the whole day together. Even though I was sick, the Taj was stunning and I’m glad I did it. It was also nice to have Sharma Ji navigate everything for me since I was too deliriously ill to cross the road without getting hit by a cow and/or tuk tuk.
I still can’t believe a random girl from Miami’s friend who she met off Instagram’s friend who lived nearish Agra found me on my train and took me around Agra for the whole day on an incredibly informative and interesting tour of the Taj Mahal. And I can’t believe I can seriously write sentences like this. It’s a wild, wonderful world we live in, people.
Beautiful, right?
Unfortunately by the afternoon I was so pathetically sick and tired, and Agra was hot as all hell – but my train wasn’t for another 6 hours. So I waited. I waited in the hottest, most crowded train station of life with nothing to do but stare at the wall, block out the noises of crying babies, and ignore the stares at the foreigner who looks like she’s about to pass out and/or cry (that’s me). But, on a bright note, I took a fancy express train back to Delhi that had AC and served coconut water and vanilla ice cream. Magic!
Back in Delhi, I gave Mara a big hug in the airport (she was en route back to Miami) and went back to the Mehta’s home to get my act together. It was finally time for the next leg of my adventure in Nepal.
Leaving India was so hard. So much harder than I thought it would be.
There’s nothing more empowering than tackling something that scares you face on. To take yourself somewhere far and foreign, to be completely alone, and to transform this place into something cozy, intimate and familiar filled with memories. It’s simply wonderful.
My first month in India was so hard. I felt so alone, so overwhelmed. Completely out of my element.
It’s easy to get caught up in the ego of travel and think you will meet your life long friends/fall madly in love/have the wildest experiences from the moment you arrive. But in reality, I spent a lot of my first month feeling anxious and exhausted. Embarrassed that I wasn’t having the same life-changing experiences I had heard so many other travellers having. Thinking what will I tell people at home? Wondering when I was going to find myself. Hoping I would experience that one moment that made me think oh yeah – that’s why i got kicked out of new york – it was all meant to be.
That didn’t happen. But something else did.
I’m not sure when and I’m not sure how, but one day I woke up and sort of felt okay. Deep deep down, under layers of insecurity and fear and bullshit, a tiny part of me felt a little more healed than it did a few months ago.
I may never meet that person or experience that one thing that makes being kicked out of New York feel worth it or meant to be. But I’m trying to remember that I don’t have to. And the sooner I figured that out, the sooner I was able to enjoy the experience of India for what it was. I let my loss and grief connect me with others – and with myself – in a whole new, fabulous way. And I wouldn’t trade this experience or this feeling for the entire world.
Hilariously, in hindsight, I now think India is the easiest, greatest place to travel on earth. (Ha!) It wasn’t linear and it wasn’t perfect – but India did change my life and it did change me. Not only because of the fabulous memories and people, but also because of the hard memories and people.
And I learned that you can’t force these changes. There was no magical turning point when everything became easy and I found myself. It was when I stopped trying to make things easy and stopped trying to find myself that, well – I sort of did. And the best part is, there’s still so much more me to discover.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the weather I would probably stay there until my visa expires in July. But at this time of year, it’s either unbearable heat or monsoon rain. But one thing is for sure – I will really miss India. I already do.
Yes – the colours are bright, the people are kind, the culture is alive, the food is delicious, the chai is divine, the head wobble is infectious …
But it’s so much more than that.
All I had heard from people was don’t go to India alone and India isn’t a safe place for women. I know this was out of concern and love, but it made me incredibly anxious. And guess what?
It was fine.
More than fine. It was life changingly, soul smashingly, wildly, absurdly, indescribably wonderful.
A few of you have reached out to me for some advice on solo-female travel in India and I’m going to put together a post soon with some suggestions. But one thing I will say now is just go. You will be fine. There wasn’t one moment in India where I felt seriously in danger – and it wasn’t just luck. It was smarts and strategy, faith and openness. It was the courage to say yes and the courage to say no.
I arrived in India a very scared, broken hearted, timid person. And now I’m leaving stronger and more beautiful than I’ve ever felt. With friends, memories, skills and stories that will carry me through so much of what’s to come. With intimate, cozy corners across the world that I created for and by myself.
The long waits, the soul-crushing heat, the tummy troubles, the crying, the laughing, the cow milking, the 20 hour train rides, the spice, the mosquitos, the strangers who took care of me for no reason, the harassment, the desert sunsets, the girls in RangMahal, the dance parties, the garam chai, the squat toilets, the Hindi, the stars, the cold water bottle spooning, the bucket showers, the people, the many blissful moments of oh my god i’m in india…
The biggest, bestest ass kick.
धन्यवाद, India. I’ll be back.
❤
loose leaf 
TEARFUL READ because I know you and your pedigree
Love
Harvey
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Fantastic adventure – bravo on taking the leap and being open to the experience! What next?!
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Thanks, Mr. A! I’m on the road until September exploring other parts of Asia. More soon! Hope all is well with you xo
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