So, the tour is over! We took the overnight train from Varanasi to Delhi - 16 hours, only 4 more than scheduled - and somehow we were all sort of wistful as we went through where everyone would be in a day: Singapore, Mumbai, en route to Thailand, en route to London - and me in Gurgaon, the face of globalized commercialized India, a village a few decades ago, but well on its way to being a shining city of business and apartment blocks and malls.
I realized on parting with my fellow travelers that many of them are at transitional points in their lives. If they were not all there for India it was because it's not the final destination, its purpose is to help make a break with the old place, an old life. I mentioned that six of our twelve were Brits, and four Aussies, and that India turns out to be the midpoint of an UK-Australia axis (even in being 5.5 hours different from London and Sydney!). What I only realized with time was that three of our Brits are leaving the UK for open-ended stays in Australia or New Zealand, hoping or expecting to make a new life there - the youngish working class couple (who became my closest friends on the trip) and a friendly Mancunian accountant in her thirties who's ready to do something new somewhere new, perhaps running a craft shop? Two of the Aussies are going to London for a few years, perhaps longer (it depends what work they find) and a third - my roommate, 28-year-old dredlocked and tattooed surfer Wayne - is taking his first overseas trip as a way of kickstarting a new life, perhaps back in Australia (but in Perth, not the east coast where he's from) but he's open to suggestions; he's got a few more weeks in India - he's thinking of cycling or mopeding up to Kathmandu or down to Kerala on his own. An unseasoned (sic) traveler he's the only one in our group who never worried about us and them, always drifting away from the group into conversations with people, playing cricket, trying out their bicycles or rickshaws, and a magnet for children: a big heart, a trust of the world and no baggage. I'd love to know what he finds, what finds him. The group thinks he's liable to end up a sadhu.
This is actually an extraordinarily high percentage of people in transit, no? And it probably makes our group, both in its limitations and its general if uncommitted friendliness, unrepresentative. Since India wasn't the destination so much as a stepping stone, a stopover, a palate-cleansing, they weren't interested in it in the way I am (and of course think that people should be, not that I could quite describe my own interest in it, and how it's managed to wait this long to get me over here!). But that doesn't mean they won't have had powerful experiences here: they are at receptive, open points in their lives, and Intrepid does a good job of maximizing the possibilities and varieties of unscripted spontaneous experiences, considering what you can do with a tour. Years from now now, this fortnight in India may turn out to have played a bigger role in their life stories than any of us can now imagine. (I don't exclude myself from this.)
I'm here in Gurgaon for a few days with an old friend and his family - lots of family, since he lives with his parents and brother's family - which will be a nice contrast to the inescapable distance of even "responsible tourism" in search of the local experience. (How fortunate I am to know people in so many places!) And then, since I don't return to Melbourne until next Sunday, I'll take a trip on my own somewhere - perhaps Jodhpur, perhaps (farther away but very tempting) the caves at Ellora and Ajunta, perhaps some as yet unthought of place recommended by my friend's family. Travel in India on my own, if only for a few days! I'll keep you posted.
