On travelling to India
I recently travelled to India for the first time. I did not expect to experience a life reset, but then, India surprised me.
I stepped out of the empty halls into a furnace, having travelled 18 hours to get there. The day after Christmas, I left Paris for Dubai to Cochin, in Kerala, India. Leaving behind cold and wet for hot and humid. Twinkling, sparkling Paris to a green, mountainous sprawl of coconut palms, tea plantations and misty forests. The extremes began the moment I stepped outside the terminal onto the curb. From quiet, single-occupancy rooms to deafening streets, monochromatic buildings and clothing styles to explosions of colour across temples and saris, from a semblance of order to functioning chaos. I would spend the next near-on two weeks in a world completely different from my own.
Having travelled a few times to Southeast Asia, I knew I would be shattering the world I knew to experience another. This was one of the reasons I was desperate to go. Someone had once asked me why I chose to travel to places that were challenging in terms of language or cultural differences or poverty levels or political oppression — why would I want to see or experience such things? The truth is, I can’t imagine not wanting to do so.
The world I know, though a source of comfort, can also feel small, limited. I wanted to feel uncomfortable, unsure, unsettled. I wanted to learn again.
An unintentional detox
So though I knew I would intentionally shatter my comfortable world to experience another, I didn’t realise that I was also going on an unintentional detox — of several things at once. It wasn’t until I was there, and until I returned to Paris a few weeks later, that I realised I had intentionally or unintentionally given up some of my Western habits and comforts in addition to my world.
For the first time in my travelling life, I decided not to bring my laptop. When I’m travelling, I tend to stay in touch with the world, but on this trip, I knew Internet access would be limited and/or unreliable; there would be no real sense in lugging a laptop around the planet for it to stay in a bag. So I brought my phone, intending to get a SIM card upon arrival.
As SIM cards are complicated to get (there is a lot of paperwork and photos to provide, etc. to get one in India; in Kerala, they have made this hard for tourists), I ended up going without. So no computer and little reliable Internet access.
Next went good coffee—I was lucky to get a cup of instant coffee without sugar, as we were in quite rural places during this visit, from trekking through tea plantations to fending off leeches in the deep forest. The last day, I had the pleasure of drinking instant coffee with one or two ants floating around in my cup (I did note how lovely it tasted as coffee was not plentiful on this trip).
Next went alcohol. In Kerala, alcohol is taxed 100% and so finding it in restaurants or homestays is limited. I like a nice glass of wine with dinner sometimes (all those years living in France have rubbed off on me), but as alcohol was not listed on menus or available, we went without.
Next went beef and pork. India is a wonderful nation for vegetarians. The food is absolutely beautiful. But if you are looking for beef or pork, it can get complicated. The cow is a sacred animal for the Hindus and the Muslims don’t eat pork — so in Kerala, you may be able to find beef if you are in a non-Hindu restaurant and pork if you are in a non-Muslim restaurant. We often found that neither was available (though mutton is). If you’d like duck, you can choose your live duck and they will “prepare” it for you at the market, and you can take it to a restaurant and they will cook it for you — the same with locally caught fish.
Next went sugar (except for in coffee and tea). Though desserts are available in India, we did not opt for them. In France, desserts are as important to a meal as a starter and cheese and salad are. But in India, we found that sharing around breads, chutneys, curries and rice filled us up, leaving no room for desserts. That being said, we soon learned we needed to ask for coffee without sugar — by default, all coffee is served with a healthy dose of the stuff.
So if you’re wanting to do a digital detox, try a dry January or alter your eating habits for the best, India is your place. You can do everything at once.
Breaking patterns and routines
In addition to going without the above, we also found we were called upon to (and could) do more with less in India. We actually found we didn’t need much for two weeks in India in terms of possessions. We each travelled with four changes of clothes, two pairs of shoes (for trekking and beach walking), light jackets and scarves/wraps to cover my legs and shoulders, a full medical kit and snacks for those moments when our stomachs couldn’t digest more spicy food. Our belongings fit into one suitcase of 19 kg.
We also found we did not need three meals a day — two meals (breakfast and dinner) were just fine. We didn’t need coffee to start our days or Internet access to check in with the world every minute of every day.
We also experienced more pain than pleasure some days, which as Paul Bloom describes in The Sweet Spot, can actually be quite pleasurable, providing a deeper level of meaning. We were not suffering in the strictest definition of the word, but I did break out into a sweat on more than one occasion as I kept ordering (and loving) spicy foods. We also fell into a stream when trying to get out of the radius of a male elephant in the wild, leading to one of the more powerful moments of our lives. And yes, I had to deal with overstimulation as an introvert who spends a lot of her time alone and in flow. More pain than pleasure, but well worth it!
Letting go of what one’s used to
A lot of our trip to India really was about letting go of what one is used to. Shattering our known world, going without one’s creature comforts and habits, breaking routines and patterns. It was also about going without some of our givens:
- Clean water: Every day was filled with bottled water; we could not drink from the tap. We used bottled water to rinse our toothbrushes, our mouths. At home, we’d just fill our water bottles from the tap, to help keep us hydrated in 32-degree (Celsius) weather, not so in India.
- Effective sewage disposal: Sewage disposal worked pretty well in most places (apart from the houseboat in the backwaters — which would be the case in many places in the world). The first few days I returned to France, however, I still had the reflex of putting used toilet paper in a little bin next to the toilet instead of in the toilet itself. Such was the way in India (as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Cuba, where we had become accustomed to this practice).
- Warm or hot water: The first couple of days, we had cold-water showers in Cochin — and throughout the rest of the trip, we were lucky to have tepid, rather than hot water. In the hot cities, cold showers were welcome. Up in the mountains, our showers were very quick!
- Road rules, predictability and safety: Anyone who has travelled in India knows that at any given time, you will find cows, rickshaws, tuk tuks, pedestrians, oxen pulling carts, motorcycles and cars swerving around and directly toward you. No one stays in their lanes (in fact, I do not know why they have them); there are rarely traffic lights (though plenty of traffic police in Kerala); vehicles pass you on both sides, even around turns. The horn becomes your friend — you hear its helpful warning cry every other second on some days. If you enjoy calm, orderly driving, you’ll have another experience in India.
- Order, cleanliness, control and “things”: If you like an easy, predictable life with no significant issues — or if you fear not being in control or not being able to pick up something you need or being sick or not understanding how to cross a road, I take it back. Don’t go to India for a reset. You’ll pass out from the stress.
Getting something else instead
So imagine going through an unintentional detox, breaking some of your usual patterns and routines, going without some of your givens, such as clean water, order and road safety, and coming out the other side.
What would the upshot be of going through something like that? This came in via email this morning, and I thought it summed things up perfectly:
Often, the sooner you can be happy without “it,” the sooner you will be happy with “it.”
All those things I went without — good coffee, Internet access, quiet, tranquility, order, ease (to name a few) — and grew at peace with going without, easing into the reality of my new world, were the very things I knew I would love more intensely when I stepped off the curb back into the airport that would launch my return.
The thing was, I didn’t want to go back to my “easy” world. I loved being in this place. I’d done a reset. I was back at zero. I liked being here. I’d found my centre, my place of peace (though India is far from peaceful in places).
I make it sound as if everything was taken away — and that taking things away is what makes a reset. But that is not entirely true.
You also get things in return during a reset. Just a few days into our trip and for the duration of our time in India, these things graced my life:
- powerful and authentic time with family and new (Indian) friends
- the ability to be fully present, absent distractions
- the joy of writing using pen and paper (I wrote each day about the experience in a little journal, something I had not done since I was in my 20s)
- releasing my attachment to outcomes
- experiencing wildlife and nature on foot, feeling scared, feeling my heart thumping in my chest and adrenalin coursing through my veins.
What I learned
I also learned a few things during this trip to India, things I hope to take with me through the rest of my life:
- Getting rid of things, doing more with less, makes me happier.
- All that matters is relationships — with humans, with animals, with living things.
- We don’t need much — in fact, there are millions of people who don’t have much, but they have each other.
- I prefer cleanliness and order and quiet and time and space to think and write, but getting into the mess of the world where everything is far from perfect is what stimulates my curiosity and growth.
- Life for me is not about doing or living a million things at once — spend a morning in Madurai (or Delhi or Bombay) and you’ll see what I mean — it’s about slowing down and being present with what is happening and then taking the time and space to integrate the learnings.
- Most everything you think isn’t possible actually probably is, but in another form or a different way: there is not just one way to do or feel or be. There is a myriad of ways.
You may already know these things, and if you do, you are ahead of the pack. You may not need to go to India to do a reset. But then again, you may want to go anyway, to shake your world up and open, and feel what it feels like to feel alive again.
