Change of Plans

I am in a hotel in Delhi recovering from the past few days. Robert and I had colds all the time we were in Varanasi and I had stomach trouble. We were feeling better but the trip from Varanasi to Bodhgaya put us under again. The train was four hours late. We knew when we left the hotel that it was going to be two hours late so we planned accordingly but by the time we arrived at the train station, it was another two hours late. We had reserved seats and the people in the compartment were nice, but Robert’s back was hurting so he climbed up to the bunk above and lay down for most of the trip. It was dark when we arrived and it was a slow and bumpy ride in an auto rickshaw from Gaya where the train station is to Bodhgaya. The good news is that our guest house was spotless, the owners were great and the room was large (largish) and comfortable. However, when we woke up the next day our colds were worse. We went to the temple on the site where the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree. When I was last there in 1998 you could touch the tree and people climbed up and tore off leaves and it looked in very bad condition. It is now fenced off with glass panels so no one cant get to it and the tree is now healthy and beautiful. It is not the original tree but one from a cutting from a tree in Sri Lanka that comes from a cutting of the original tree. The area is large and there are hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims from all over the world chanting in their various languages, meditating, reading, prostrating themselves, and circumambulating the temple and tree. It is a powerful place because of the amount of devotion. Robert is an atheist, occasionally militant, but he too liked the place and went back for a second visit.. On the second day in Bodhgaya both Robert and I came down with a fever and a doctor came to the hotel, pills were administered, and I began to feel better immediately. Robert however threw up his pills as soon as he swallowed them and didn’t take another dose until the morning when he began to feel better. In the afternoon of the third day, I came down with a worse fever and diarrhea and the doctor came again and this time it was shots, one in the behind and one in the hand. The doctor stayed after the shots and in 15 minutes I was feeling better and he left. In the morning I woke up feeling better than I had felt in weeks. I realized that much of my experience of traveling with Robert on this trip had been colored by illness that I wasn’t aware of. I knew I had an almost constant cold but I didn’t realize how ill I had been. After this we began to talk about cutting the trip short and then we received news that Robert’s brother had died. We reserved seats on a plane to New Delhi and left that evening. The plane was four hours late. I received emails telling me this but I didn’t check and my phone had no coverage in Bodhgaya so I didn’t receive their texts. Therefore we waited four hours at the airport. They gave us a terrible boxed lunch. Well, the white bread sandwiches with the unidentifiable spread were terrible. There was also some sort of fritter that was tasty but soggy. The mango juice was OK. I threw most of the meal away. I had my bags of moong dal to sustain me. The food on the plane was better. The bread was still white but it had texture and tasted of yeast. It was spread with very good butter. There was also another fritter but it was warm and there was a tasty dal preparation to go with it and a very sweet sweet. We had booked a hotel from Bodhgaya and went straight from the airport, found the hotel, and collapsed. In the morning, we began the ordeal of finding a plane back to Los Angeles that left that day. There was one at 2 PM that we were hoping he could catch. He called the booking site on which he had booked his return flight using Skype on my iPad. After three hours that consisted mainly of holding, we realized that they could do nothing. They would refund a cancelation fee and return the rest of his ticket, but they needed a death certificate and that hadn’t been issued yet. So we hung up, went on line and found a flight that left about 8 and took about 20 hours with one layover. After Robert had entered the credit card information, the site froze before it could issue the confirmation. That caused a call to American Express to make sure the charge had not gone through. We finally booked him on another 8 o’clock flight with a longer layover. After that, I began working on my return ticket. I found a good flight and everything went well until I realized I had sent them an email address that was the first half of my Gmail account and the second half of my Yahoo account. I sent an email with the correction and within 8 hours I had a confirmation email so I can get through security and get on the plane. I went with Robert to the airport. We took the express subway that works very well. It is world class. Los Angeles should have a system like this one. Everything went well at the airport and I waived good-by to Robert after he had successfully passed the guards at the entrance. I had decided to stay a little longer to finish up Hindi classes, retrieve some stuff I had stored with a friend while we traveled, do some shopping and spend some quiet time digesting this trip. It will take longer than a couple of days, however, despite all the difficulties of this trip, I realize that I enjoy being in India still. I think I can no longer travel at the budget level that Robert and I have been traveling at and I don’t know what that will mean or how often I can afford to come back, but I now think I do want to come back. India in the 21st century is a very interesting place, a combination of the past, present and future that is unlike any place else in the world. The influence of the European and North American countries is very evident. Indians like TV’s, modern appliances, Western clothes, Macdonald’s, KFC and pizza. And the disfunction of the country is constantly evident, yet it works, and it works better now than when I first came here in 1998. I hope I am able to come back and watch India’s transformation into its new self for some years to come. I was going to take a couple of Heritage Walks this weekend but I realized I don’t have the stamina. So I am going to take one more Hindi class, see a friend from the class, do a little shopping and try to keep doing less and noticing more.