Staying Put

I arrived in Varanasi on Saturday and I plan to stay and volunteer here for about two months. I arrived just in time as I had just about reached the point where I was touristed out. I don’t know how people travel continuously for a year. But then again, I’m someone who takes great comfort in routine. I love going every day to the same Bridgehead coffee shop and ordering the same medium skim latte at the same time with the same people. It isn’t that I’m homesick or that I am tired of India. But I have a strong urge to stay put, see the same people every day, make some real connections, develop routines, and not have every conversation centre around where are you from… where have you been … where are you going…

For me there is something tiring and a bit stressful about backpacking and backpacker culture. It feels like we expend a lot of energy in pursuit of the “authentic experience” - trying to get off the tourist track to mingle with locals in their natural habitat. There is an implicit hierarchy of tourist experiences where in trading stories extra points are always awarded to those who discovered the undiscovered beach or were invited into a local’s home (eg: “They’re so poor but so generous – they insisted we all drink their chai *and* they gave us the best homemade sweets we’d ever had!”). I went with one woman I met for a Pizza Hut dinner which sent her into an existential dilemma – did eating at an American chain mean that she was a “touristy tourist”? Was she selling her backpacker street cred for a greasy deep-dish pizza? She resolved to eat the pizza and to never mention this slip to anyone. Of course, this quest for authenticity is all part of the larger pressure to maximize one’s tourist experiences: see everything, eat everything, experience everything. After all – when am I next going to be in Mysore? Many seem to be happily immune to this kind of pressure, but sadly I’m not that evolved a tourist.

Before arriving in Varanasi, I spent about six days in Pondicherry where, with few exceptions, I spent my days working in the mornings and then wandering around in the late afternoon and eating dinner at the same place each night. I did have an ayurevedic massage on day 2 – but I can’t quite find a way to describe it and still have it qualify as appropriate reading material for all ages. To give you some idea - think two masseuse sisters, a canola field’s worth of oil, and enough direct skin-on-oily chair/-oily wooden table for my relaxation to be punctuated with bouts of anxiety re: previous guests and the potential for transmittable disease.

I arrived in Varanasi not quite knowing what to expect. I’d set up my volunteer position at World Literacy Canada (WLC) quite last minute at the suggestion of my friend Tina who had worked for this organization a few years ago and had a very positive experience. I was supposed to leave for Israel on February 16th to do an internship position there through the Professional Internship Program run through their government. But as my time here went on, I felt that I would be missing out by leaving India so soon. I’d not actually heard from the Israel program in a while and had not been informed about what I was to do upon arriving in Israel. As it turned out, yesterday while checking my email at a café in Varanasi, I got an email from Israel telling me that their Internship program had just been cancelled. (Good thing I hadn’t booked my plane ticket to Israel.) How is that for karma?! Om….

Here in Varanasi I’m staying at a friendly family-run guest house about 10 minutes walk from my work here (at a rate of about $3.75/day). I’m not sure what my project is going to be yet. WLC runs quite a few interesting programs – I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get involved in their advocacy and social entrepreneurship programs in particular. In the past two days I’ve been helping with various administrative tasks and getting to know the three awesome Canadian CIDA interns (all women) who have been here for six months and are sadly (for me) leaving next week (not so sadly at this point for them – I’ve been listening to them fantasize about hamburgers, sushi, hot showers, privacy, and lack of leering men back in Canada.…).

I’m sure I’ll be writing lots about Varanasi in the next few weeks (see also Lisa’s awesome blog about her trip here – www.lisaincalcutta.blogspot.com) but so far I really love it here. The WLC office is in a beautiful building owned by the King and overlooking the Ganges River. On my first night here I met an Israeli tourist (who was stopping through on his way to Nepal) and the two of us explored the ghats and took a boat ride down the Ganges in the late afternoon/early evening.

Tonight I’m taking my first Hindi lesson with a tutor who was recommended by the interns. Wish me luck!

As always- please send news as I miss you all! Luv Nadine