India…. A second chance
November 8th, 2010 by adminYesterday’s experiences, traveling alone again, which I have until I met my buddies from Singapore in Laos. It reminded me of some of the differences of traveling alone compared to traveling with a group or even just one of your buddies. People ask me all of the time ” why do you travel alone?” it must be dangerous, lonely or boring.
My reply is always ” I eat where I want, sleep where I want and shit where I want!” no conversation about what do you wanna eat, sleep, do whatever, I don’t know, what do you wanna do? Bullshit. But the real reason is that I think it makes me more available to encounter locals. Example: if I pull up in front of a restaurant with all my buddies and we get off the bikes, talking about whatever and go into the place shootin’ the shit and order our food, probably nobody approaches us. Alone, I am likely to be approached by service people or locals who are curious to what the hell is this guy on a big bike in the middle of nowhere doing here. I get adopted all the time. Strangers invite me to stay with them, go party with them and their friends and usually I end up being the only foreigner there. Perfect. I want to experience what the local people are doing not what Frommers or Lonely Planet recommends which means that’s where all the tourist are, and not where I wanna be. Case in point, the concierge from the Taj Bengal ask me if I would like to accompany him to a members only club he belongs to for a cocktail, I accept and he meets me in front of the Hotel after his shift. He takes me to this out building located in a park like setting where his buddies are playing snooker and drinking beers. His wife and son are there waiting for us and we have some killer hor douvors and beers while shooting the shit with his friends. It’s about 8:30 and they invite me to dinner with some of their friends. We go to this funky little place, full of Indians and all start drinking Scotch and waters with meals they order and we just kinda pick at and share. I meet this big x rugby player who loves to sing old blue songs in English and now here I am in India sitting in local bar doing what Indians do. Fricken perfect! I am sure by my previous writings that you can tell I was a little disenchanted with my first experiences in India. This evening with my new friends had totally changed my assumptions. I don’t think that this situation would have happened if I had arrived with all my friends on the bikes together. Most people would have just assumed, that we had plans or that we wanted to do something together. Don’t get me wrong, I have also enjoyed traveling with the boys from Singapore. Usually all the decisions are mine and mine alone. What route to take, how far to travel on any given day, and sometimes in a foreign land with very few people speaking English, you can go days even weeks without a real conversation. Just the basics of lodging, food and gas, with sometimes nothing much better than sign language. On the point of navigation, I have been very lazy on this trip. Chris who I have nicked named the Colonel is always the first guy to have his helmet on and bike started. His cry of “let’s go! 5 minutes”
Means you better get ready to depart or he leaves without you. My MO is that in the a.m. I usually follow Chris out of the hotel. But after lunch I hang back with Eric and run Sweep. Just follow the group, where Chris leads we follow. If someone has a problem, everybody works on the solution to move the team forward. It’s kinda nice not having to make or be responsible for every decision. More time for speculation, photos and just chillin on my bike.