The Surrender Project: Day 3: "Where you from?"
I must have needed sleep because when I rolled over this morning and looked at my watch I did a double take, it was 10:08 am. I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed my phone (damnit Henry, you said you were going to meditate everyday before you look at your phone!), and responded to a few things on Instagram. One thing I do enjoy about being active with stories and posts is the amount of replies and messages people send me. I feel like I have a few instagram friends; people I never get to see (but would love to) yet we like each others stories and respond to hype each other up from time to time or ask questions (you people know who you are. Much love to you). A guy who was working at the hostel comes into the room and tells me to come eat breakfast, but I hadn’t signed up and didn’t want to pay, he said do not worry and just “come eat!” With a bit of force and just ever so slight annoyance. Fine, I guess I will eat a free meal if you insist. My phone didn’t charge last night so I left it in the room as I went down to eat. This just means more time to sit in my thoughts, which went a little bit crazy this morning, so let’s dig in, eh? The rest of this paragraph is going to be some writing I did in my notes immediately after breakfast, so you get a live look at where my head was.
As I sat there thinking (again) I realized how much time I have had to do nothing but think over the last few days, like so much more than I have in a long long time. I am alone the vast majority of the day, the amount of time in an actual conversation would probably be less than 30 minutes a day over the last four days, which is not much. As previously mentioned I am also trying to be extremely intentional with “scrolling” social media, which just allows for more time to think; every time I am eating, riding the subway (which has been around 2ish hours a day), walking, sitting, etc. Yes, I am trying to focus on being present and maintaining mindfulness but that’s just not possible to do it nonstop for me at this point in my meditation/mindfulness practice. Maybe that is the ticket though, just more presence. When I am eating focus on how each flavor is interacting with my tastebuds, when I am walking feel the ground and my feet and hear every sound and smell every smell, stop getting lost in thought. Easier said than done though. In my defense, it is challenging to be locked into presence when I am eating breakfast and I know I have to go to a new city soon and I have zero clue which one to choose or HOW to even choose where to go, it is not like life can just carry me across India. I still have to pick, I have to make choices in this experiment as well. But how? Part of this feels contradictory to me, like I do not want to google to find where to go, but what if I feel inclined that the world is telling me to google something then should I? Does this make sense? There is a bit of a struggle in this, where to draw the line or if there should be a line at all? I don’t freaking know, man. I realize that so far the days have been amazing, that at the end of the day I feel so blessed and so grateful for the experiences, but this morning I am just a bit on edge. I am just a bit confused almost, trying to think to make decisions when the whole point of this project in the first place is to not think… I think? Yes, I can tell myself it is all going to work out, and I know and believe it will, but sometimes that doesn’t take away my concern, or the fact that I have no idea where to go and no idea how to figure that out. At some point I need to decide, I am not sure I want to just stay in Hyderabad, India for the entirety of this project.
The reason I wanted to share this insight into my morning is to paint a bit of a realistic picture of what this journey is like for me, what traveling in general is like. Because I feel like on social media you see highlights, you see breakfast in a swimming pool in rice terraces in Bali. And while yes, that is a possibility, I feel like so much time is spent learning how to think things through or make decisions or just sit in your own damn mind and think. So, there is a bit of a glance into my mind.
As mentioned, I was feeling just off centered during breakfast, and got called quite strongly to do a meditation, something I skipped this morning as mentioned. Wow, I guess this was some higher guidance because this meditation slapped. It started off easily transitioning into a quiet mind and not many thoughts, and when they did come I just became aware of them and they sorta disappeared, it was a very flowy state. Eventually a thought popped into my head that was meant to be there and is directly linked to what I just talked about, having fear around what I am doing. Then a warm buzz hit my body as I realized I am in quite a unique position; that I legit have nothing planned or figured out in my life right now. Like I have the ability to truly test this theory out because it isn’t like I just go home back to a job in 30 days. My life is completely wide the fuck open. The only thing I know is that I will be back in Minnesota before august. Maybe I will go back in a month or so, or maybe any other time in the next x amount of months. But it is exactly that, I have nothing planned, nothing figured out. No job, no rent, no nothing. I just have me and this life and it is so wide open to the point that I was freaking scared, there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to ground me to reality. But then something beautiful happened and my favorite quote popped into my head, the same one in my instagram bio, “replace your fear with the curiosity of the unknown.” Wow. Bang. Whoosh. Jaw dropped, heart flooded with gratitude. What a beautiful experience to be able to sit back and see where life takes me, its like sitting down to read what will be your favorite book, the most thrilling movie, a better story than all the best writers could ever come up with. What a gift that is! It has me freaking stoked dude! Except to go off of yesterday’s blog, I do not want to remove all fear, I want to feel it, and have it teamed up with the curiosity as I take life on day by day, because what a fucking blessing it is to have 100% complete freedom to go in any direction. So yeah, it is going to be scary but let’s dig into that fear and don’t let it shut us down but open us up with wide open arms saying, “bring it world, I am so ready for whatever is next.” This was the calling of the meditation, why I needed to clear my mind and allow this thought to come in. Ooh, thank you world for that one. I want to note that I would argue we all have 100% complete freedom at anytime, that every day we are making the choice to stay at our jobs, or stay in that relationship, or keep paying rent, etc. It may feel like you are stuck but you are not, you can literally quit your job tomorrow and never show up again and move to a cabin in the woods. I am NOT telling you to do this, just sharing the viewpoint that the choice is always yours. However, obviously there are bigger consequences from not paying rent or quitting your job than for me to fly to Pakistan tomorrow or bus to northern India. Just saying, you always have the choice.
Back to the day, as I was wrapping up the meditation a guy walked into our shared room and as I opened my eyes I just asked him, where should I go next if I want to experience culture and do not care about touristy things and stuff. He told me to go to west Bengal, so I went to buy a train ticket without even thinking about it. However, after literally two hours of trying to figure it out the website told me all trains in that direction are on pause right now. West Bengal is a 25 hour train ride away, it is in the far east and north of the country. I am choosing to take it as a sign, you could argue its just the website being down, but I think it is the world telling me that’s not where I am supposed to go next, because why not believe in the magic? Like seriously, it doesn’t effect me negatively in anyway to believe that there is so much magic in this world and it is so fun to do so. At this point it is definitely time for me to go out and see the world and take some pictures again, so I open google maps and just zoom in on a random area and click on the first thing that catches my eye, it is a fish market. A fish market in the middle of the country?! In back streets of a city with 11 million plus people? Dude, sign me up for this all day. I grab my bag and head out, first seeking out a coffee which doesn’t take long to track down. I do absolutely love me some caffeine. Quick sidebar, I am also choosing to not drink any alcohol for my stay in India, especially after I realized there hasn’t been a full 30 days that I haven’t had a sip of alcohol since probably high school… The reason I say that is because I do not think it is going to be challenging at all, however, coffee? No caffeine? Fuck that dude, caffeine is my favorite drug I cannot let that one go. So after getting my caffeine I hop on the metro and choose to walk the remaining two miles to the fish market. One thing to note, I haven’t seen tons of kids on the streets yet, which I thought was going to be a more prominent thing. That is all. The first hundred or so meters out of the metro system was a bit of a reality check, I must have gotten off at a poor area. Now, I have seen some homeless, just like any big city in the world, but this stretch of road had so many people sleeping literally feet from 3 lane roads. It was jarring man, and I had so many thoughts and feelings going through my head. I am not going to dig into this now, because I know there are places I will go in India with substantially more homeless and I want to write more than a few words on it, so stay tuned for that. After the initial bit of homeless, the next mile and a half go pretty smoothly, not too many people stopping to talk to me, just cruising the streets. The last mile, however, couldn’t have been more different. It started when I noticed a fire burning in a side alley, so took some pictures of it, and the kids all yelled at me to come see it so I did. I stayed there for a minute or two and then went on my way. A block later I run into four kids, low teens probably, and it is always the same questions, “where are you from?” “Ooh USA. What state?” Followed by, “what is your name?” “Where are you staying?” Then they see my camera, “what is your YouTube channel?” And then they get my insta and I take their picture and they ask me to send it to them and then I’m on my way. This happened again and again and again. It is fun to interact with the kids and talk to them, they are so curious and I can see it is fun to practice their English. It is also interesting to see how when there is a group of them there is always one leader who does 90% of the speaking. Even to the point of others asking him questions in whispers to then ask me, it’s cute. I eventually make my way to the fish market and get absolutely kicked in the back by the smell. I am not sure what I was expecting showing up to a fish market at 3:30 in the afternoon but holy hell. Lets just say it was basically shut down at this point and I moved on as quickly as possible, I didn’t even take a picture. My whole photography focus of the day was going to be the fish market haha! It quickly changed into photos of people who asked me for photos. After I left it was 2 more hours of nonstop conversations like I previously said. Always followed by requests for me to send them pictures. At this point I am going to try my best to honor each of their requests, but no more. If any of those kids ends up reading this I want to say thank you for being so curious and friendly with me, and finding such an interest in photos and me. What I am about to say next is a complete reflection of myself, not the kids or people wanting me to take photos of them/want to come say hi, because deep down I will always appreciate it. I want to paint the picture a little bit clearer so you understand the amount this happens, and to what degree. I would say half of the time it is people on motorcycles that will pass me as I’m walking down the side of the road and pull over a few hundred feet in head of me, and wait for me to pass them and then either I will stop or keep walking. If I keep walking they will drive next to me and converse, it is always the same questions I listed above, like verbatim in that order every single time. There are points where they ride/walk/bike next to me for blocks at a time, even when I am not feeling the vibe of the conversation and am making efforts to cut it off. I do understand how this could be very off-putting for a woman to be in this situation, especially because there are times where they will follow me for a while, and it can be men from 6 years old to sixty, literally. Or groups of like five dudes and they are all watching you for a block or two. I understand my privilege for being able to experience this with no concern for my safety or other worries. With that said, I have never felt threatened or scared that somebody would do something, not even for a second. It feels like it always comes from a place of curiosity and interest to learn. Anyway, by the end of the day a couple late teenagers or early twenties drove up to me and cut me off, asking me to take their pic, and I always do, I mean hey its free content. They asked me for my instagram ID to send them the pic and I had to just say sorry I don’t have instagram because at that point in the day I couldn’t get more than 100 meters without being stopped by somebody and my social battery and willingness to interact was running out for the day. It is a bit energetically draining to be the constant center of attention when you are walking around. I know I have mentioned it a few times and I want to make sure it isn’t coming across as negative or any judgement. Just mentioning it can drain your energy to always have people watching you, coming up to you, shaking your hand, following you, staring at you, etc. I literally shook well over fifty hands in the 2-3 hours of walking around. I would guess around 75 or so. As I have said before, if you’re ever feeling a bit down or lonely and want some attention, send it over to India for a week and you will feel so special and loved. The people here really are some of the nicest and warmest people I have met traveling, they always have a smile on their face. A special shoutout to all the people I make eye contact with and give a head nod to, and you return it with a huge grin almost every time. It is a special thing to be able to connect, even if with just a head nod, with so many people throughout the day.
Day three was a good one. It wasn’t crazy, there wasn’t a bird pooping on me or any really highs or lows, just a good day with more lessons and experiences to pack under the belt. I cannot express how much I have loved these first few days overall. I think a large part of it is that this is my favorite type of travel. I honestly do not really care about the buildings and hikes and must-see old temples, I care about the people and what life looks like. I think it is part of the reason I loved Saigon, Vietnam so much, there was so much going on and the ability to connect with a vast amount of people. My most ideal travel day is to walk busy streets with my camera and see what I can capture, and now I have 30 days to do that as a project, and probably a bit longer after the project is done, to do that in a country where the culture, people, and openness might make it the perfect country to do so. Everyday I have countless interactions with strangers who I get to photograph, and photograph all of the richness of life here as well. I hope to find better words to explain the amount of things there are to witness everyday here. I literally could spend a month in Hyderabad and just walk around in a new part of the city and photograph it. The part of the city I have been to each day has been drastically different, like from the religion displayed, to the amount of people, to dress, and the amount of money. What a treat this country is, I know I am so early on in exploring it but India is something else, and I mean that in the absolute best possible way. Just for transparency too, I am averaging just under $13 a day, for everything. About $7 goes towards lodging too. So, on $6 a day I am eating, drinking multiple coffees/chais, snacking on bananas (literally 2-4 a day), and hopping on metros and busses and going all over the city. And I am getting so much out of it, what an investment.
