"What is over there?"
I don’t recall where or when I read those words, but I've decided they are the essence of this past chapter. Since returning to the West I feel I've been unable to effectively communicate what I did in Asia and express its meaning, even to those closest to me. As a fellow traveler once suggested, it is often not until after a trip that you can determine the important moments and learnings. I’d like to share with you one story that I believe best represents how I spent my days in the 10 months between October 2013 and August 2014.
In short, I decided to follow one of my dreams. It was impossible to predict how this would all unfold; I just knew I had to start somewhere. So on the 7th of October, after impatient fantasizing for as long as I could remember, I boarded a one-way flight to Amritsar, India.
This was not a "gap year.” I was not trying to escape anything. To travel open-endedly had been a dream of mine since childhood, and to wake up one day aware of this achievement was blissful. To be sure, the mission was not to follow the backpacker trails around creation: sipping coconuts and galavanting around exotic islands with my new foreign buddies, collecting Insta shots. My intense desire to see and understand the world led to a year-long work, study, and travel adventure. All three. I yearned to decipher global cities, deepen my historical and cultural fluency, push personal boundaries and figure out for myself what is true in 2014. Trusting that gut and intuition, with the generosity and hospitality of friends and strangers around the world, made these aspirations possible and contributed to personal and professional growth beyond extraordinary heights. By balancing productive experiences and habits with a healthy respect for serendipity and vagabonding, I’ve been able to create the journey I always wanted and then some.
I’d be remiss if I did not express unconditional gratitude to those hundreds of individuals who have been so supportive, inspiring, and hospitable along the way. I wish I could do for you half of what you have done for me, and that my appreciation emanates from the stories and learnings I’m proudly ready to share. This is me and this is one of way of doing it.
India was not the place I had in mind when I initially decided I wanted to explore Asia. In hindsight, I believe it was meant to be. Western visitors love to share tales of their first moments face to face with Hindustan upon leaving the airport: utter chaos is an understatement when the journey from point A to point B is a zero-stakes game of survival for each stretch of asphalt between horn-blaring trucks, directionally challenged mopeds and autorickshaws, relentless beggars, stray cows, dogs and pigs among a cloud of dust and the energy of 1.25 billion humans. It’s a magical place that welcomes you with a promise of existential adventures and infinite possibilities. An upset stomach as well.
I didn’t come to India to get in touch with my spiritual side, but I suppose these things have a way of sneaking themselves into one’s plans on an open-ended trip to the subcontinent. The first month in Jalandhar, Punjab I lived with my college friend, Pratham, in a multi-generational home while assisting with the management of his software development business. October was packed with holidays that provided a dazzling introduction to all things India from Punjabi cuisine to traditional dating rituals. I'd spend evenings chatting business and politics with the cousins and uncles, watching cricket and Indian epics on TV with the parents, and playing all sorts of outdoor and board games with the little nephews. Night after night I felt like an adult and a kid again. After a few weeks of living and working in Jalandhar, I was antsy to get out of town for a bit and do some touring on my own. To date I had not done much solo travel, save for a half day here or there in transit. There was one memorable afternoon spent in Santander, Spain following a perfect weekend in Basque country with friends, who caught an earlier flight home. I recall feeling a powerful sense of independence that resulted in valuable introspection and exciting encounters as I wandered around the city, stripped of my ordinary surroundings and forced into direct experience. Not to mention the flexibility. This feeling was noted.
Against the concerns of my host family and having decided against a mobile data plan, I set off alone with a small backpack and Google Maps screenshot of potential routes through the state of Rajasthan, the vast desert state between Mumbai and Delhi. I knew I was in for a little adventure when I found myself struggling to book any type of transportation online, and wound up reserving a one-way flight to Jodhpur not out of desire but because only that airline's website would accept an international card! It was then clearly an adventure when the 11am flight was delayed till noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm and cancelled, leaving an angry mob of Air India customers cursing up a storm as I slipped away and talked my way onto a flight to Udaipur, a city I had recognized on my haphazardly created map. I would put a lot of blind faith in serendipity over the next year; it seldom steered me wrong, though the price of flexibility would manifest itself in an outrageous number of last-minute, one-way, international flights.
None of these changes bothered me much because I had the good fortune of picking up a hell of a riveting book at the airport. In fact there would be several airport book stores that would change my life in some form or another that year, highlights of a reignited phase of literary consumption while abroad. I strived to understand the historical and cultural narrative of each country I was living in or visiting, through crowd sourced consumption of recommended books in addition to documentaries, news outlets and other media. I had been scanning the shelves for something India-related when I came across The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami. India, check. Adventure, check. The autobiography follows the life of Richard Slavin, a Jewish teen from Chicago whose search for meaning and fulfillment in the 1960s inspired a journey East, where he spent years along the pilgrims' paths of South Asia, soul-searching through apprenticeships with yogis and self-examination.
I tore through his autobiography and discovered a number of ways in which I identified with the author. Richard Slavin would join the list of figures who inspired me in one way or another to embark on my own journey: Steve Jobs, Wharton Professor and author Richard Shell, a best friend's father, Ram Das–these role models all made the leap East in their early careers to satisfy a curiosity and thirst for truth, tremendously influencing their futures. Perhaps it was a coincidence? Or maybe there was something special here. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I recognized the value of their awareness and diversity in experience. I wanted to write my own version of the story. Investing in myself by creating an adventure that nourished me from every angle has been one of the better decisions I've made.
Richard’s story was also compelling because we were both experiencing India for the first time, struggling to navigate the country both physically and socially.
A string of incidents suspiciously similar to those experienced by the author in his autobiography, most notably when it came to being in danger. Now to this day I tell people that the only time I felt threatened while abroad was by animals. Not a single time did somebody attempt to rob, hurt or wrong me in any manner (except whoever who stole my bicycle in Phnom Penh, although that saved me the hassle of a trip to sell it in the bike market upon departure).
The first occurred while I was wandering around the ramparts of Chittorgarh Fort, the largest in India. This was a place I had seen photos of on StumbleUpon years prior–a symbol of the ancient and exotic in my mind. I didn’t even know it was in India until I was reading up on Rajasthan a few days before the trip! I figured I would try to check it out if it were convenient to visit. It wasn’t, but fate in the form of limited rail options led me there anyway. Despite my confidence the trip had stimulated, nothing had prepared me for arriving at small town train station in India after dark, without a hotel or taxi or any idea where I was besides the name of the station. All I knew to do was put my hood up, hold my backpack, duck my head and walk straight past the touts, beggars, and traffic, pretending I had a determined destination until I could look up and guess which direction looked less sketchy and may offer shelter. It would be like this the next three nights.
I’m walking along the fort’s walls the next day when a child approaches me to ask where I am from. I entertained a little small talk, attempting to hint that I’d prefer to be alone without being overly rude. The boy follows me along the ramparts anyways, answering my questions about the fort with great enthusiasm. All of the sudden, we notice a pack of monkeys about 20 yards ahead. The monkeys notice us too and start creeping our way. I had seen pairs of monkeys camped out around touristy sites throughout India, sneaky little devils who liked to steal water bottles and food right out of your hands. But never a pack of 10+ moving towards me with menacing facial and body expressions. Before I had a chance to react, the boy conveniently spotted and picked up a long stick on the ground, told me to stay back and inched closer to the monkeys with the poise of a boxer seizing up his opponent. The pack stopped its advance and retreated into the high grass, clearing a path for us to continue on our walk.
This was strange. There was hardly enough time for my heart beat to spike before it was all over and I felt a strong sense of gratitude for the chain of events that provided protection in such a random, threatening situation. It reminded me of something I had read in the autobiography just the evening before, in which the author witnessed a group of monkeys almost attack a European man, only to retreat when a little Nepalese boy appeared to deter them. The author concluded the monkeys had sensed fear in the man, but feared the boy because he had no fear in them. There were several other close encounters in Richard’s story with dangerous animals and people–par for the course of an ascetic lifestyle in the wilderness.
The second funky event happened later that day at Chittorgarh fort. I had been wandering solo most of the afternoon in near oppressive heat, with my backpack of possessions for the week, trying to find the part of the fort I had seen in photos on StumbleUpon. I was lost, hungry, exhausted. While stopping to sit and finish off the last drops of my water bottle, another little kid approached me. I thought to myself ugh, here we go again. This boy was younger, maybe just 5 or 6, spoke minimal English and the little clothing he wore looked awfully filthy. It would have taken more emotional and physical energy to evade him than to have him tag along. We had been walking together along a path for a few minutes when I started to hear the faint sound of music off in the distance. As we walked closer it appeared to emanate from a small shack and sounded quite pretty. My mind floated and heart stopped moments later once I made out the words in the music. It was the exact same chant that the author had described hearing while walking along the Ganges River, a mantra whose words and meaning were a mystery at the time but entrancing and dreamlike nonetheless. Recognizing the chant sent chills through my body. The shack-looking building must have been a small temple. I thought to myself I must go inside. Although we had struggled to exchange even a handful of words, I turned to the boy, pointed at the building and music and asked “What is over there?” He looked up, gazed into my eyes and replied with one word: “God.”
Shivers rushed through my limbs. This is my life now? Just being here today had been a sharp deviation from my normal existence to say the least, now it was beginning to seem like perhaps these two kids didn’t just happen upon me by coincidence. The parallels to the book I was reading were too eerie, I didn’t know what to think! This was crazy. I had to laugh, as my only form of defense to this new onslaught of emotions. Back on planet Earth, I was walking closer to what I could now deduce was a temple, wondering if I should go inside. Across the road was group of five or so older men, laughing at the sight of a lost-looking foreigner strolling around with a raggedy looking kid. Though I felt on the verge of something extraordinary, I grew uncomfortable about entering under their stares, and to this day one of my bigger regrets of the last year is turning around.
A third strange event happened the next day in the town of Pushkar. I was walking up a hill to a temple said to offer a good view when I looked to my right and saw some dogs and hogs picking at a mound of garbage. This was an interesting enough scene to take out my iPhone and snap a photo. The animals must have heard the shutter sound because they looked up in unison and several started bolting my way. NOT what I had in mind this morning. I swung my backpack off one shoulder and grabbed my sweatshirt with the opposite hand while backpedaling and bracing for the snarling beasts to pounce. I could see their eyes bulging with rage when out of nowhere, two children ran out from a building behind me yelling at the animals, cutting them off and gesturing for me to go in a different direction while they served as a distraction. Again? I was dumbfounded, partially due to the extreme close call but more so because it reminded me of the author and a story he told of a near-death experience with savage dogs, only to be saved in the nick of time by similar unexplainable circumstances. A quick “dhanyavad!” and I was on my way, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
The trip continued to deliver memorable times. I’ll never forget watching the sunset over Jaipur, befriending two German girls and their driver for 24 hours, surviving overnight buses and trains with a Slovakian couple, spending an afternoon at an Ashram, seeing the Taj Mahal. I finished the autobiography on the train back to Jalandhar and did a little research upon arriving home. The author winds up committing himself to the Hare Krishna movement, a spiritual society that had become quiet popular, albeit occasionally controversial, throughout the twentieth century. Many prominent individuals like George Harrison had become devotees of this monotheistic branch of Hinduism, based on expressing devotion to Krishna, a deity manifestation of Vishnu, by chanting the mantra which the author and I had both heard. I didn’t think much of it for the next month or two, until I visited Mumbai. Oh Bombay.. whenever asked what my favorite places visited were, I immediately think of my time in this loco city.
I met Vishal (through couch-surfing) down by his place in Colaba, got settled and took a stroll over to India Gate, the biggest tourist spot and home turf for hundreds of touts peddling everything legal and illegal under the sun. A couple of teenagers walked up to us and started pushing a book in my face. Vishal told them to go away, we weren’t interested in buying anything. But the title of the book, Bhagavad Gita, caught my eye. This was the 700-verse Hindu scripture, the jewel of India’s spiritual wisdom. I had learned about this ancient masterpiece during my post-Rajasthan research and felt like I should check it out given my efforts to learn about all things India, from economics to religion. Especially for a bargain of only 100 rupees! Later that night back at Vishal’s, I opened the book and out popped a post card. It was a scene with Krishna, and there was an address written at the bottom. I thought to myself, Oh cool! I’ve visited so many temples but never a Krishna-related one, maybe I’ll go check this out tomorrow if it’s in the area. I entered the address in Google and guess what appeared in image search results on the top of the page? The author’s face. Woah! Now I pretty much had no choice but to check it out. This was exciting and peculiar. I then recalled that the final pages of his autobiography described his evolution into a spiritual leader of India, but I must have glossed over the part that mentioned he had founded a temple in Mumbai. After all, at the time I had no intention of even visiting that city.
The a few days later I took a taxi over to the temple (after failing to locate laughter yoga on Chowpatty beach). This temple was gorgeous. I could have eaten off the floors. Upstairs in the main room I found a seat and just took in the scene for a few minutes, reading a couple of brochures and people watching. An older Indian monk named Sankita took a seat next to me, handed me a necklace made of brilliant marigolds and started explaining the history of temple and it’s adjacent ashram. We spoke for about an hour, firing questions and answers back and forth as the conversation shifted to Krishna, important stories and their meanings. Sankita walked me downstairs for a divine and free lunch, where I was introduced to Karuna, a younger man from Montreal. Karuna and I walked along the grounds and had an even longer conversation about spirituality and our paths. We had much in common. I told him the whole story about reading the autobiography, the animals and the music, the post card. Karuna could hardly contain his excitement. His interpretation of the events in Rajashtan was that Krisha had protected me when I was in danger, and guided me when I was lost. To him, this wasn’t just coincidence. He insisted that I come back on Sunday for a special ceremony and to meet Richard–who now went by Radhanath Swami and is only occasionally in town. I accepted the invitation, though at the time I was not sure I’d be around that day, my very last in the country.
The next morning I cabbed it to the temple, where Karuna greeted me at the entrance and escorted me to a personal balcony seat. The service was beautiful, with the worshipers, mostly Indian, sitting shoulder to shoulder and fixated on Radhanath Swami's ever word. His sermon related a Krishna story to practicing empathy and sharing love, painting such a pretty image that admittedly elicited tears of happiness. As soon as the service ended, Karuna took me downstairs towards Radhanath Swami's office, where there was a line of dozens of people out the door. Since he is rarely in Mumbai, devotees clamor to get a chance to have a few private minutes with him and will wait hours to do so. You can imagine my surprise when the monks ushered me to the front of the line to be the first one with the honor of sitting down with the endearing Radhanath Swami. What was I to say! This was all too surreal. I sat down cross legged across from him with Karuna next to me. I introduced myself and told my story. His eyes were wide open with amazement the entire time as I did my best to describe everything that happened, tying in the parallels to his story, my own questions about life, and learnings from Karuna and Sankita. We discussed the meaning of it all in the context of my own spiritual journey, in addition to Hare Krishna in 2014 (Russell Brand, a devotee, was scheduled to meet with Radhanath Swami later that day) and its views on certain issues on my mind. We spoke about compassion, life and death, material passion, and the spiritual journey. He gave me some gifts on my way out and we said goodbye with the feeling that it would not be the last time we met.
Thank you Andrew for sharing parts of your fantastic, mystical adventure! It is amazing how our lives unfold and intertwine with each other. Hearing such tales certainly shows a master plan and a master orchestrator. Here is the link to Radhanath Swami’s book The Journey Home that the author was referring to: http://www.radhanathswami.com/book/