The past couple weeks have brought our journey through some shifts in thinking and in direction.
I've been going through a lot of questioning with myself and with colleen about the journey we are on. Questioning what is our purpose and if my heart is really here. Often just wondering, 'what is the point?' And thinking a lot about home.
I'm trying to be honest with myself and with colleen and addressing these more difficult questions and learning from seeking for the answers.
And I guess the same goes for everyone throughout our lives, wondering why we are here, and what we should be doing in this life.
But I find travelling, and specifically times of transition bring up the most questioning and difficulty. That feeling of emptiness and aimlessness as we move from one phase of life to another.
Colleen started to get sick a couple of weeks ago just after we left Hampi in Karnataka. Up until then we had been cycling the whole journey from the southern tip of India in Kanyakumari.
On a hot stretch of highway with few villages and little traffic other than long distance trucks she started to feel nauseous and ended up vomiting up her lunch. We flagged down a shared jeep, threw our cycles on top and went into the next city to find a lodge where she could get some rest.
In this small junction city with very little going on and a lack of the usual community vibe we had become accustomed to I felt a bit stuck and anxious to be somewhere else yet still holding on to the possibility of continuing cycling on from there up to Pune.
I spent the next day filled with tension, trying not to let it show to colleen who already felt bad enough... finally we decided to take a bus to Pune the next day. Colleens stomach was still giving her trouble and she wouldn't be able to have real energy to ride, and definitely not enough to really enjoy it. The summer was coming on too fast for us to be staying put though. ...
On the bus ride north I spent some time reflecting on how this transition was making me feel. How I had difficulty letting go of the potential to be cycling the entire length of India and how that difficulty was primarily due to my ego.
In a way letting go of this need to cycle the entire stretch gave freedom, it cut the attachment to this larger idea and goal of the journey and gave more space to be honest and present in the moment.
In Pune we stayed with Kedar Gogte and his wonderful family who welcomed us in at the last moment. Kedar met us at the bus stop in the evening and we rode together back to his house. Right before we got there I had a silly fall riding up a ramp onto a side walk and hurt my elbow, preventing me from being able to put enough pressure on it to cycle for a few days.
Since we now needed more time to heal we decided to take a night bus the next over to Aurangabad for side trip to visit Ellora caves.
On the bus ride my head was feeling really itchy and I found some bugs in my hair that I must have picked up from a cheap lodge we had stayed in recently.
Yahooie!
The next morning I cut off my dreads with a knife and put them in a burning pile in a parking lot. We then cut my hair down further and got rid of the lice with some ayurdevic oils and did some clothing decontamination that involved us both wrapping sheets around ourselves and being restricted to the hostel room.
I didn't want to touch the bed until every insect was sure to be gone.
Cutting off my hair I found to be another release of the identity I had started to form for myself with it. I was surprised to feel some regret in cutting my hair and almost less beautiful, like I'd lost some of my femininity with the reduced length of my hair.... but stripping off that extra layer that I identified with was ultimately freeing.
These accumulated experiences in shifts of thinking about this trip and about ourselves brought a lot of reflection on what direction we wanted to take from there.
A large part of me has been pulling towards home feeling a need to become more connected to my family and community. I've been learning so much from the high value people here put on community and family and sometimes feel anxious to not be contributing to my own.
A recent phone conversation with my dad gave extra excitement for all the great community building work going on near home and all the potential for more! I'd like to continue to try and learn from ways of living and thinking here that could have a positive impact at home.
With still some questioning and rehtinking in mind we decided to take a bus north to Ahmedabad in Gujarat and continue cycling from there into Rajasthan, up to mount abu and Udaipur where we are now.
Now we'll be continuing north to Pushkar tomorrow to take part in a 10 day Vipassana meditation course! 10 days of sitting in silence should sort our silly anxieties and have us more at peace with ourselves and this journey :)
LA de dah de dah de dah ...
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