DAY 10-11: Finding Neverland!

Who do we really are? What makes US? What determines the truth of oneself?

When you become a traveler the “truth” that you have carried around your whole life, in the form of a presentation card, disintegrates the farther away you go from home. What has defined us dissolves like raindrops al contacto con el mar, and vanishes in the infinite blue horizon. Can you really define a person by the job that pays its bills, instead of by the dreams they may have had, or still even dream? Do we have the right to determine how a kid will grow up to be just by judging its parent’s life choices and behavior, or by the friends that surrounds them? Should we pint point the kind of being someone is simply by scrutinizing their off spring’s successes or failures, instead of by the closeness of their relationship and the love they cast for each other? The amount of school diplomas and Honors one has achieved it’s what’s paramount; being actually inspired by the path you have chosen is just for losers. “Be a Doctor darling, you’ll make money” “I know you hate the sick, but you will get use to it.” Dreams are measured by their size, instead of by how much pride and joy they will bring the day you finally fulfill them. With how many and how often one has fucked, determines more accurately who one is than how profoundly one has loved. The cash accumulated in the vault represents hard work; how it was accumulated… who cares! 

You are your job, your bank account, your university degree. You are who you married not how hard you work to make that commitment to LOVE -not to social expectations- last. The more tangible things clutter your space, the more admiration you will receive. It is the accumulation of crap, instead of wisdom, adventure, love and friendship that shows how good you have done for yourself. Yet, while pursuing all this quantifications that are supposed to determine you, you lose your true nature. One day you wake up and you just can’t recognize the reflection in the mirror. Who is this person, and when did it take over? If your seven-year-old self could see you now what would it said to you? Would it keep on living after confronting its future?

When you are a traveler. When everything you own fits in a backpack. When your profession means nothing unless you are a doctor in a life or death experience. When your beauty is covered with pounds of dirt. When clothes become only something that covers you. When languages become your most precious possession, and instinct your most profound and important piece of wisdom. When those who you meet don’t care about where you live, what your family do, or how much green bills you have in your pockets. Instead, they are fascinating about why are you there, for how long, where are you going next and why, what your dreams are, and what are you searching for; then you really start finding the kid that still leaves somewhere beneath the roughen skin. People likes you, or don’t because they can connect directly to your soul; and souls know better their perfect match because they are pure beings. There is not, “well, I’ll be his friend because I can get something from him,” because what are you going to get really, a better train wagon, or a $2 dinner for free??? There is no more profound interest than finding the right play buddy. You become a kid again; you let your instincts guide you, and you start listening to the voice you had shot down so long ago. Everything is new, everyday is an adventure, every color is a new rainbow, every sound an unchained melody, is like start walking again. Have you seen how babies get totally lost on that little dry leaf they found in the ground while crawling to mom’s arms? That is how you become, lost in all the beauty nature can offer, lost in all the share stories, laughs and tears, lost in all the miracles that are around you every day, but we are just too busy showing off to notice.

I always say that India taught me to see with my heart and not with my eyes; to feel with my soul, and not with my senses; to close my eyes and find the best of friends within me. Traveler’s friendships are based on this description of oneself, and that's maybe why you make the best, the most unconditional and most long lasting friends during this adventures, because what takes many years for friends in your regular habitat to know and understand, takes hours for two open souls to attain. It is this freedom of being what I think most of travelers miss when we are back home, when we have to change the backpack for the briefcase, the “what I like, I love, I dream,” for “what I do, I have, I will,” for “how much green” instead of “how much feel.” And even for us, fortunate ones, who have at least tasted how life was really supposed to be, find it almost unrealistic to keep the just reborn child alive. Thus, traveling becomes an addiction because is the drug that brings you back to bases, lets your true self out, and the seven year old you buried time ago under layers of adulthood, comes again out to play.

So, in my book, true happiness can be attained when you don’t let life kill the kid you can still be. Ask your mom today who were you, how did you interacted, and what did you dreamed off before your heart started to shrink, and see the difference between now and then. Otherwise, just grab that dusty backpack, or buy a new one if you never had one, and go on the search for Neverland!

Day 7: Part 3: On my way to the Taj Mahal: A B-day experience! Part III

A glass of perfectly formed small snug bubbles, in the beautiful hotel visited by Lady D and Prince Charles during their own Taj Mahal adventure, living my dream… but alone. It is always strange when you are alone on your B-day, for some reason it feels wrong. I love being alone; I enjoy a lot my own company with only the frequent sound of the voices in my head. No, I’m not squizo we all have voices in our head, shot your month and you’ll see how strong they are. But there is something about being alone on your B-day that just feels lonely. I was about to write some thoughts in my dairy when three Americans walked into the bar. About ten minutes later I just went to their table and asked them to cheer with me because it was my B-day and it wasn’t feeling like such. There is something special about finding your countrymen when you are far away from home; an immediate bound is created with people you probably wouldn’t even cross paths in your everyday life. They were a nice group of Marriot corporate suckers, who with their corporate credit cards were traveling in India for a week or so. We sat outside with the view of the  flawlessly manicured garden around the big refreshing pool, and the Taj as backdrop, constantly reminding us why we were in this ugly, unfriendly, hot and sticky town. The group grew, as the afternoon became evening. The sunset came and went, and I was gifted with another $26 dollars bubble glass. They invited me to join them for dinner, but if the bubbles were that expensive, I thought, I didn’t want to envision what the dinner bill was going to look like. By then my trip around India was planned to last a month and half, so I had to be careful with my cash flow. Little I knew then that the original plan was about to be extended into a five month life time adventure. In any case, I thanked them for the drink and the invite and took off next door to my $30 dollar hotel and its terrace’s restaurant, beautifully decorated with top of the line plastic chairs. However, we had a even better view of the Taj, and I just couldn’t get enough of it.

The Brits were up in the terrace having dinner, so I decided to join them. We had almost no light up there except for one bulb and few candles. The bulb attracted a lot of little bugs, nothing too scary, but annoying nonetheless. We had dinner, and stayed a little longer enjoying a nice cold beer, when all of the sudden something brutally crashed inside my shirt, right on my terrified boobs. Then something else joined the first one, and there came a third crash. It was like the ambulance and the police got to the crime scene faster than you can say 911. These things, whatever they were, were crawling inside my bra, and my chest. I could fell their little skinny legs tickling me as they moved from boob to boob. I immediately prayed to God, and all the hundreds of Hindu gods that partake on any Indian altar: "please Ganesha just don’t let it be cockroaches." Here I was, jumping up and down in front of my friends and the confused waiter who hopeful eyes were waiting for a reluctant and savage striptease. In a country where showing a little bit of leg can cause traffic jams and fist fights, my modesty had grown stronger faster than I could imagine, so with cockroaches or not the shirt stayed on. Like a manic, and not exactly of the floor, I ran down the stairs straight into my room. Once there I took off the shirt and the first intruder jumped out. Bra came out, and the other two followed. I was almost avoiding seeing the crawling creatures that had just taken a nice evening walk around my own Mount Everest. Oh, what a relief it was to realize that Ganisha heard my prayers even that early in the game. They were not cockroaches but crickets. “Now wait a minute, where did they go?” I couldn’t see where Jimmy Cricket and his friends had run for safety, which meant that I had three little strangers sleeping with me all night. Who knew if this perverts after having a taste of divine boobs, were going to be looking for some more of it later. That was one of the worst night sleeps I had in India, which comparing with many of my friends stories, was not bad at all. Yet, I spent the whole night in my silk bag, covered head to toes, and feeling creatures massaging my tired muscles.

Next morning, I’m glad to inform, my dramatic Agra experience ended when I jumped in the train that would take me to my next destination in Rajasthan, the home of the famous Monkey Temple, Jaipur, or better know as the Pink City because all the building in the old city were and still are pink, creating the illusion of eternal pink sunsets.

Day 4: Part 2: On my way to the Taj Mahal: A B-day experience! Part II

With uncontrollable anger in my heart from an unknown truth, I waited for my friends. They came out 30min later sick and tired of saying “no thanks.” We told the driver that we would now like to go to one of the many monuments around the city, while he with a determined stare and a frenzy head gobbling insisted that we “must” go next to a nice jewelry shop “with very much fine cheap jewels, best in India,” that was own by his wife’s, sister’s, husband’s, cousin’s, friend. You see, I would soon learn that everyone in India is somehow related, and they all own some kind of shop to sale tourist -natives as much as foreigners- something that you don’t really need nor want. We tried politely to explain that we didn’t have any need for jewels, but he insisted. I was ready to explode and I did. I told him that we have gotten him to drives us where we wanted to go and not where he wanted to take us. Oh! He just didn’t like the sound of a woman giving him orders, much less in that tone, and I could see those amber eyes swiftly shifting one shade lighter shining like the blazing sun in the sky. My friend’s husband trying to cease the approaching storm grabbed his Lonely Planet and quickly asked the driver, as firmly as he could manage, to take us to Agra’s Fort, until he reluctantly agreed.

 Our walk around the fort took maybe an hour and a half. It was a large and lovely fort with a great view of the Taj Mahal. After many camera clicks we got back on the dreaded taxi, and the match started all over again. The plan was to leave the Taj Mahal last so we could enjoy the famous sunset on the mausoleum, but when the driver started once more with the silk, the jewels, the carpets, and raising his voice by the minute, I looked at my traveling companions and they immediately read my screaming silence. I thought “they better say something fast before I do it again in my own way…” God, sometimes it is just hard to control the “cuaima” in me. He asked the driver to take us to this sight or the other, and the driver’s answer was always the same “too far sir.” We knew it was not true of course, all the monuments where close by, but the face of this man transformed into a strange kind of rage that we could not control or comprehend, inclined us to immediately leave his side. We finally told him to drives us to the Taj and just leave us there. When Mister Furious finally dropped us off, he didn’t only make us pay for the full day service that we were not going to receive, but had the insanity to asked for his tip. If I had been on my own I thought, I would have stay and fight for the next hour with him, but the Brits again, too soft for the job just got more money out of their pockets. He left happy with his half a day of work paid as full day, and his undeserved tip.

 I was fuming at the taxi driver as much as to my companion. We just had been robed, and we just let it happened. In India you wont find the violent robbery you face in Latin America, they do it in your face, but they don’t take it from you, they make you willingly give it to them. It is a talent I would love to poses. It most be in their milk, because even kids are really good at it. And until you grasp it, until you truly and fully understand how it works and why they do it, it infuriates even the most peaceful man. You are giving them what they want while you intellectually know you shouldn’t, but you cannot stop, it is a force stronger than your intellect. It is like going to bed with your best friend, knowing that is a big mistake, but you can’t stop yourself, and you’ll just have to deal with the consequences next morning. So, there we were at midday, with the inclement sun burning our heads, at the exact time every book advises not to visit the Taj. This was certainly not going according to plan. When one wants a plan more or less to work smoothly while traveling, one most stay on its own, other wise one just has to be open to change. But it was hard for me to accept the changes then. It was my B-day after all, and I had written a movie in my head of how the day was meant to go. In my Bollywood romance mean taxi drivers, magic carpets, and fucking polite Brits were not previously written characters. The open scene was me in the gardens of the building, feeling like a princes in her castle, and taking pictures of magical views while I awaited for the beautiful, charming angle that was going to suddenly appear from no where in that enchanted place, and who was going to swift me of the ground and travel with me the rest of the time in this celluloid like love affair. How quickly I had to wake up from dreamland.

But, hey, I was in the Taj Mahal after all. I was about to enter into one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I had to let go off my anger and enjoy it. And while doing my line to get in, in the women side (yes, even lines are separated) I decided to let go, until they got me again. Now they were not letting me in because of a drawing a 5 year old kid had given me. The day before I left Delhi, my girlfriend’s son draw something for me and I had put it inside my dairy. Without any explanation the guards would not let me in just because of this “scary” drawing. Maybe they though it was a masterpiece plan to destroy the Taj, elaborated by a genius kid. The other thing they could not allow inside was my cell phone’s ear piece (but cell phone was ok, God figure). Whatever they thought the drawing was, it was bad enough for them to kicked me out of the line without one more word. I could not believe that I traveled so far away to see this bunch of white marble put together, and find Prince Charm in the mist of the golden hour, and I would have to go back home saying, “I didn’t see it because of a kids drawing and my ear piece, and please don’t ask.” Can someone F… explain!!!??? This was just the first of many moments in my five months in India that I would find myself saying “what the hell!?” With the remarkable difference that all the incongruence that drove me mad during my firsts weeks, would soon make me giggle like a teenager in love every time they happened. I moved out of the line and told my friends to go ahead without me, that I was not allowed in. But they didn’t go, and we started to look for a solution. After asking few people, we finally realized that they actually had a locker room where to leave personal belongings not allowed in, except that they forgot to tell me so. I left my stuff in a little room filled with cardboard boxes simulating looker rooms. I walked out with a washed out number badly written in pen on a piece of paper, doubting if I would ever see my belongings again.

By the time I walked inside the Taj, half of my burning desired to see this place had been extinguished. I enjoyed it, and loved it, and saw all the corners and took pictures, and sat in the white marble to contemplate the view and the people, but my so awaited movie had disappeared from my memory. Looking back, it was maybe there when I started to understand what change, plans, and openness was really all about, even if I didn’t quite get it yet… as I still not sometimes. At the end of the afternoon, too hot, hungry and tired to wait for the sunset, we walked our way back to the hotel. I lost all my pens in the hands of every kid that ran after us. Kids love pens in India, are almost better than lollypops. I promised myself to bring enough pens for every kid I encounter the next time I’m India. Thinking of it that would mean massive amounts of pens. When we got to our hotel I decided to take a shower and go to the 5 star hotel next door, to have a real drink for my B-day. Walking into its perfectly manicured grass entrance, guarded by more security than the Taj itself, I realized the other side of the Indian coin. In India, as disturbing poverty can be, astonishing can be it’s wealth. This place had nothing to envy any European Ritz, and prices where just head to head as well. My celebrative glass of champagne cost me the moderated sum of $26 dollars in a country where a month salary for a family of four can be even less than that. But it was my B-day, and I was planning to enjoy every penny and bubble of the cold elixer!

To be continued….

Day 3: On my way to Taj Mahal: A B-day experience! Part I

Day 3, and last 3 days of 34….

No people, I’m not depressed with the fact my B-Day is coming, just in shock that is coming so quickly, and that my life at 35 is not at all as I imagined it to be. But as they say, life is what happens while you make plans… or something like that. Last night I sat with my mom in her bed in Miami, and we stared to go back B-day by B-day, trying to remember what I have done with each one of them. For the life of me I could not remember what I did for my big 30’s, which makes me think it wasn't that good, but I did remember some other fun ones. And the more memorable ones had the word plane and trip engraved on it.

What about last years? As a good dreamer last year I planed to spend my B-day in the Tag Mahal.

Should guilty seek asylum here,

Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.


Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,


All his past sins are to be washed away.


The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;


And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.

In this world this edifice has been made;


To display thereby the creator's glory.

After that poem written by the hand of the Emperor itself Shah Jahan, which sorrow crumbled his heart when his beloved third wife, Mumtaz Maha, died giving birth to their fourteenth child, I filled my heart with hope that life would be changed after crossing the door of the majestic mausoleum. That visit in fact may have been the beginning of a spiritual transformation, or at least the bridge between dreaming India and loving it, but at the time it felt… well, kind of like a rip off. Not because of the actual monument, which in fact it is an amazing creation of men, but because the ordeal I had to go thru to go inside the world’s most splendid tribute to love.

The day before my B-day I adventured to take my first trip on an Indian train. I had bought a first class ticket after the recommendation of many travelers who advised never to board anything lower than 2^nd class if you didn’t want to spend the night with rats crawling over you in a very crowded train wagon. Finding my wagon was a challenge on it self. Delhi’s train station is far from organized, or at least in any way a western mind would immediately comprehend. The amount of people moving around in more than 15 platforms overwhelms even the natives. Thus, imagine me with my huge open eyes and a backpack that was not part of me yet, trying to swim through a grubby sea of bodies pushing you around, smells from the finest sweet cardamom to condensed water-free piss, and an overwhelming visual contamination of colorful silks and rats having a party on the trash accumulated on the train’s rails. After my frustrated intent to read the charts pinned on a messy board and understanding absolutely nothing, I cried for help to the first western looking Indian I found. He spoke perfect English and with a smile in his face he was the man who got me finally going on the right direction.

While waiting for the train, I got to meet who were going to be my Taj Mahal adventure companions, a British couple that were almost into tears because they had been jerked around for almost an hour from platform to platform without finding a soul who would illuminate their now obscured vision. “I want to go home,” she screamed. I thought, “well, after all my ordeal was easier than theirs." I found my platform at the first intent even if I wasn’t sure I was in the right place for almost 25 min, and that was only possible because my friend’s driver asked and they pointed him in the right direction. Maybe jerking English tourist around is just their way to get payback for so many years of cruel colonization. The case is that my team was in distress when we finally got in our wagon. They had been in India for few days already, and they seem tormented by the difficulty of understanding their surroundings. But I immediately figured out why, or so I thought at the time… they came unprepared. This lovely couple was traveling to one of the most busy tourist places on earth without any reservations. Of course “Miss Plan” had everything taking care of to the T, and wanting to help I immediately called my hotel for a second room. I had a taxi waiting for me at the station to take me to the hotel, so they were really happy to have found someone with a plan on the way. The taxi driver offered us to takes us around next day for a very moderate daily rate, and advised us to be careful with the many unscrupulous people, unlike him, that wanted to take advantage of fresh arrived tourist, just like us.

In the morning the three of us, exited for the day of exploring and experiencing we had ahead, got into the taxi. This time the taxi driver came with a friend, a very common thing in India. They are so used to having no space whatsoever, that being alone seems to be something no one likes. Indian drivers tent to always have a partner in “crime and in love.” In any case this addition to the trip seemed at first to be of most help. He “knew” all the where about of the city, and even offered to take me to a great place for my B-day on his account. So, innocent us with no plans of our own, we let him to take the initiative of how our historical trip should’ve started. And where else could it start but in a jewelry store or in a hand made carpet factory place. Oh hell, here is where the torment began. The Brits were amateur travelers, and with the politeness that characterizes the founding fathers of our own country, straight we went to the carpet place. I had already been to Turkey and knew very well what was that all about. Every book I had gone through before my departure to India, also strongly advised to stay away from the carpet rip off business, unless of course you really wanted one. It is like this how I spent the first two hours of my B-day, going around looking for carpet places, being instructed in how they are made, how much work they take, to finally being sent to the back of the store where they offer you chai tea and tried to convince you for the next hour with not possible escape from the kindness and persuasion that characterize good business man in this side of the world,  that you “must” not leave India without the perfect “magic” carpet. After respectfully hearing the “how making a carpet” story, I told my friends that I was Venezuelan and completely impolite, and since I knew what was coming next, I would be waiting outside. Of course they wanted to leave as well e, but they couldn't make themselves to break their British tradition.

While I walked outside, the driver’s friend with his amber snake's like eyes tried to bring me back again, but he found a fine contender in me. Escaping from him I sat on the boardwalk to watch a seven years old kid flirtatiously dance for me. He was dressed in what I believed to be a Pakistan or maybe Afghanistan’s traditional dancing clothes. His innocent eyes haughtier in black eyeliner had the frustrated aim of transforming them into the eyes of a sex symbol. At first, the beautiful glimming eyes, and the white pearl teeth enchanted me. However, as his proximity invaded my space I couldn’t but remember a scene from a book I just had finish reading, “The Kit Runner” in which it is described the usual practice of using male boys as sex slaves. I looked into his eyes, and all I could see was nothing, a frozen smile, with eyes of stone. I had to move away. His “father” I hoped, was waiting to see if the kid would succeed in collecting the expected tip, but with the story of the book in the back of my head, and the encounter with his unavailable soul, I just ran into the car with the excuse of the already excruciating  heat. I don’t know if such was really his luck, or if he was just a kid that liked to dance and found a way to make money for his family, but all I had then and as the rest of my time in India was my heart and my instinct, and I tried to follow it as much as I could.

To be continued....