The Enlightenment Game

Welcome to the Enlightenment game!  It's really easy to play, and if you rack up enough points, you get (you guessed it) the amazing prize of enlightenment!  Here are the rules...

You get points based on how many "authentic" and "pure" things,places,people you accomplish in your travels.  Here are some key examples:

1) 10 points for knowing straight away that "the real India is in the villages" and getting out of Mumbai or Delhi as fast as you can

2) 10 points for visiting really obscure villages where there are no white people, and avoiding (and denouncing) touristy spots like Goa and Varkala

3) 5 points for knowing how to haggle with rickshaw drivers and saving the 10 rupees by getting them from 40 rupees to 30 rupees

4) 3 points for a really small backpack and not buying anything while you travel

5) 15 points for avoiding eye contact with all other white people, even when you're in a tiny little town, and running into other tourists is pretty rare

6) 5 points for eating with your right hand and not using silverware

7) 10 points for no longer needing to buy toilet paper

8) 20 points for each time you criticize your own country, especially to fellow countrypeople

9) 10 points for taking the bus or riding in a sleeper train as opposed to a personal taxi or something with A/C

10) 30 points for working in a slum/orphanage/NGO and taking lots of photos with the kids you work with

11) 20 points for eating street food on purpose (and an extra 5 points for not getting sick!)

12) 20 points for refusing to buy bottled water

13) 10 points for rarely checking internet

14) 10 points for rarely reading the newspaper

15) 20 points for surviving a near death experience (ie: being alone in the mountains, in the jungle, etc. and talking about it like it was no big deal)

First one to reach 200 points get enlightenment, and bragging rights to all their friends!!!

Okay, this is silly...  But our friend Kaila and I were having a pretty interesting conversation about traveling in India and the people we have met along the way.  Kaila has spent the past few weeks in Auroville, an international community on the eastern coast, where there are many ex-pats living from all around the world.  Jake and I have also come across many different kinds of people in our travels, and something that's been coming up for me a lot recently is the feeling that a lot of this whole backpacker thing is for show and for an image.  While we have met a ton of genuinely fantastic and beautiful people on our travels, there are some people, or sometimes just a general vibe from a place or a group of people that are almost competing for the enlightenment prize.  The points I listed above are the first that came to mind...  They are things and experiences that we have had, and we have also bragged about from time to time in our own right.  We are by no means immune to this travelers' arrogance...  But at the same time, looking back at our trip these past 3 months, I'm really happy and satisfied with how we've dipped in and out of the tourist trail and the obscure trail- we've racked up "points", but we've also lost "points", and I think that has made our experience even richer.   Though I tease him, I'm always proud of Jake when he takes the time and energy to haggle with the driver or salesperson over the price.  Or when I don't know to take the bus and he navigates our way through three different buses after we've been traveling for 9 hours.  I'm also proud that we've stayed in villages and have tried new food and have been open to these "off the beaten track" experiences.  But still, it's not something to dwell on, and in talking to other travelers, I realize how arrogant people can become about "doing the India trip right".  Everyone keeps talking about the "real" India, the "pure" and "authentic" India, but where is that, really?  Is it in the ashrams, the villages, the mosques, the cities, the restaurants, the tourist traps, the buses, the 5 star luxury hotels?  It's everywhere, and there's no way to define it.  For a while, I felt myself resisting some things and feelings in myself that go directly against the backpacker ideal, and the search for the "real" India, but I'm realizing that it's really silly to even try to fit into that tiny little box, just to have bragging rights with other travelers and to feel a false sense of superiority to everyone back home.  To be honest, I'm utterly thankful for my friends and family back home that sometimes think I take the hippie/backpacking thing a little far, and laugh at me (and with me) for my crunchy-ness.  You can get too caught up in yourself if you can't laugh at yourself, and once you stop taking yourself so seriously, everything becomes so much more enjoyable.  So bring on the villages, the home-cooked food eaten with one hand, the fancy tourist traps, the over-paying, the haggling, the beaches, the mountains, the cities, the corporations, the small businesses, the American music, the sitar, and the obsession with Will Smith (because this country LOVES Will Smith).  I've always heard of and somewhat understood the paradox of India, but it's becoming more and more clear just how beautifully contradictory this country really is.  Nothing is the real India, and everything is the real India!  Sometimes the guidebook really does have the best places to visit and eat and sleep, and sometimes the taxi drivers really do take you to the local secret treasure, and sometimes (and it really is exciting when this happens), you stumble upon something incredible and beautiful all on your own.  Dipping in and out of all these different worlds has been the best part of this trip, and has been teaching me more than I could ever imagine.  

A lot of this came up to the surface as I read about the possibility of Obama becoming president, the shootings in Illinois, and on a local level, one of my classmates from Wyckoff has recently gone missing, and the search and outpouring of support for him and his family from my little town is massive.  Meeting so many people who want to completely disconnect from their homes, countries, cities, and towns makes me realize how much I love staying connected (thank you Internet cafes!), and is making me appreciate so much where I come from.  Of course, I have lots of problems with my home, from the country I come from to the town I grew up in, but as Baldwin says (and I paraphrase): "I love my country, and therefore I have the right to criticize her".  I'd rather face my issues with the west and the city and myself head on, then let is build and bubble and boil in resentment.  It's difficult, but it's making me understand a lot...

We're staying in Varkala right now, a beautiful little beach town that's very touristy and ex-pat, but a lot more laid back than Goa...  I feel like I've been here for a month and it's only been one day.  We're staying in a guest house run by two fantastic Americans we met through couchsurfing, and Jake is giving figure drawing lessons in exchange for our room, which is wonderful!  Also, Kaila Binney, beautiful lady from Vassar who is doing research on sustainable eco-villages around the world, is staying here with us, and it's been really nice to catch up with her.  And of course to make the world really small, while we were sitting at breakfast, Josh, a guy that I met at Mount Madonna Center, the yoga retreat center in California, walked right up to the table and said hello.  Also ran into Liz, our lovely American friend from Goa, when I was walking on the strip.  There's a woman from Baltimore here (where Jake lives), and we met a woman from Teaneck, NJ (about 20 minutes from my home).  Small, small world, and always getting smaller.  Happy Hallmark Day to ya'll back home, lots of love from across the world!!!