10 things I learned in India

Posted by Sarah Duff on 17 May 2012

Since my return from five weeks’ travelling in India, people have been asking me if I’ve ‘found myself’. I don’t think I was ever lost, and if I were, India would be the wrong place to find anything (traffic is a bit mental, to say the least). ‘Do you feel more spiritual?’ is the next question. Having gone to countless temples, been blessed by stoned sadhus, elephants and priests, and still wearing my string blessing bracelets from Shiva temples, I can honestly say no. So, having not found myself or experienced spiritual enlightenment in India, what was the point?

Well apart from just travelling (does anyone actually just travel anymore, instead of looking for spiritual growth/life lessons/a map to understanding the meaning of life?) and researching stories for Getaway International (look out for my article in the April 2013 issue), I did actually learn some stuff. About tea and spices and yoga and curry, and what it’s like to be a minor royal.

10 things I learned in India

1. How to not get Delhi Belly

Getting Delhi Belly is something that most travellers to India worry about. It was the first thing that people mentioned to me when I told them I was going to India – this was when the horror stories came out: ‘I lost 10 kilograms in two days because a restaurant poisoned me on purpose’; ‘I had diarrhea for four months’; ‘My friend contracted a stomach parasite and had it for two years’; ‘I cr*pped myself on a long bus ride’. I decided to try and ignore the stories and just take a lot of sanitiser and hand wipes. To be honest, there’s no way to avoid Delhi Belly when you’re in India for a longish trip. Even if you’re cautious like I was, you’re bound to get sick at some point. There are some obvious rules to follow, as in not drinking tap water, not eating for a street stall if it looks particularly grimy or if the food’s been sitting there for awhile, and using copious amounts of hand sanitiser after visits to dirty public bathrooms. What I would suggest is taking a pretty jacked-up first aid kit (my mother is a master at these – she brought half a pharmacy to India with us) so that you’re sorted with medication (see point number two) – you never know where the dreaded belly can hit you.

2. How to get better from Delhi Belly

Ciproflaxin, Imodium (for long car drives), fresh coconut water, Rehidrat, sweet-and-salty lime juice, plain rice, boiled vegetables, curds and bananas. In that order, more or less.

3. Using a travel agent can sometimes be a very good thing

I’m generally into independent travel: no travel agents, no tour groups, no tourist buses, no big resorts with buffets. When embarking on the daunting task of deciding where to go for five weeks in India, I had no idea where to start. I asked friends who’d been for recommendations, and received hundreds of them, but that didn’t really help me to decide where to narrow my trip down to in the massive country. I got in touch with a travel agent who specialises in Asian destinations and it was if a magical fairy was there on my trip. Everything was organised, from entrances to temples, guides, train tickets, drivers, hotels (with suggestions of what exact room to take for the best view) and meals on long road trips. You can definitely do India independently much cheaper, but it’s a mission. With everything sorted in advance, I managed to fit so much more into my trip and got to see rural parts of the country that I wouldn’t otherwise have got to. Tim Durham from Colours of India planned my trip and I really recommend him and the local agents he uses. You can contact Tim on tel 021-813-9778, email [email protected] or see www.colours-of-india.co.za.

4. Hindu mythology is mind-bogglingly complex

I tried to remember the myriad incarnations and stories about the gods that I heard daily from guides, and work out how everything fits into a cohesive whole, but I gave up after week three and came to terms with just being able to scratch the surface of Hindu mythology by learning the names of the three main gods. There are 330 million other gods, so I’m going to have to go back to India several more times to remember all of them.

5. Yoga and meditation are not what I thought

I’ve been doing yoga for several years and thought that I knew a thing or two about this ancient Indian system of living. Turns out that I didn’t really. The way we practise yoga in the West is physically focused, and often misses out on the philosophy and meditation that are actually the foundations of yoga. We’ve taken one aspect out of yoga and turned it into an exercise class. Don’t get me wrong – I love the physical practice of yoga and I think people get a lot of benefit out of it but I also feel that most classes here miss out on a whole awesome yogic world of meditation and ideas on how to live your life as a better person. I didn’t go to India to do yoga, but ended up attending quite a few classes, including asanas (postures), breathing and meditation, and I kept discovering how much I need to learn about yogic philosophy. The next India trip is definitely going to be to an ashram.

6. A ‘sensory overload’ can actually happen

How many articles about India have you read that mention ‘sensory overload’? I’ve come across quite a few, not really understanding what the phrase meant until arriving in Delhi. I’ve never experienced overstimulation before on a trip. I literally got tired of looking at things in India because there was so much to look at. If you’ve been to India, then you know what I mean. If not, then imagine the busiest road in your city or town, and then triple the traffic, and add camels, cows, buffalo, goats, pigs, dogs, a colourful temple emitting chanting, people’s cell phones blaring Bollywood tunes, constant hooting in all pitches, and overpowering smells – exhaust fumes, animal excrement, incense, a bit of wee and some chai masala spices – and you’ve sort of got an idea. Not every day in India is like this – in fact it’s great to get out of cities and stay in some tranquil spots to chill out a bit – but a lot of the time I found my eyes actually got tired from looking at too many things at once. India is chaotic, noisy, colourful, intense, hectic and sensually rich. If you like your travel destinations as bland as processed cheese, then India’s not for you.

7. What it’s like to be a maharani

While I get to stay in luxury lodges and opulent hotels for my job sometimes (I do love what I do, I won’t deny it) generally when I travel I tend to stay in more budget-friendly places (which have ranged from flea-pit type establishments to vibey backpackers). Because I was travelling in India with my mother, who is not into shared bathrooms and backpacker bars, we stayed in some rather fancy hotels (some of which were actual palaces owned by royal families) and were treated like royalty. At the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, our room was bigger than the flat I live in in Cape Town, to give you some idea. The staff in these fancy Indian hotels don’t want you to lift a finger doing anything for yourself, so you can’t carry your own bag ever, open a door or even pour your own tea (they practically come running from the other side of the restaurant to pour it for you). It was a unique experience for me, and while I couldn’t do luxury travel all the time, it was great to be able to indulge in a bit of opulence.

8. Chai tea is not chai tea (and all chais are not created equal)

In South Africa we call a spicy tea made up of cardamom, cloves, black pepper and other goodies chai tea. In India, chai means tea. So what we’re essentially doing at home is saying ‘tea tea’. Masala chai is the correct term for the ‘chai tea’ we drink in South Africa. And in India, it doesn’t come in a packet. A chai wallah boils up spices in a pot, adds milk and sugar and froths it up by pouring the tea from pot to pot. It comes in a small glass, plastic or clay cup and it’s delicious. My memorable masala chai moments were drinking a steaming cup and eating biscuits while waiting for our hot air balloon to fill up on a chilly pre-dawn morning in Jaipur, and languishing on a hammock drinking cup after cup of masala chai at tropical Marari Beach Resort on the coast of Kerala.

9. How to make curry

Tempering is probably something you’ve never heard of, unless you’re an Indian cook. I’ve cooked hundreds of curries and I realised in India that I’ve been doing them all wrong. I went to a couple of cooking classes on my trip, and discovered that tempering is a vital facet of curry-making. Basically, you cook the vegetables/meat/fish in a liquid, and only when it’s almost done do you fry some mustard seeds, curry leaves and other goodies (depending on the curry) in a separate pan, and add these and the oil they’re fried in to the main pot. That brings a lot more flavour to the curry – and you avoid making the curry bitter by overcooking the spices.

(I’ve got loads of recipes from the trip and a whole winter ahead of me so watch out for streams of curry blogs coming up.)

10. A bit of vatta, a lot of pitta: Ayurveda

I’d read a bit about Ayurveda, the millenia-old Indian holistic system of healing before my trip (and worked out my dosha – body type – on www.whatsmydosha.com) but I learned and experienced it properly in India, at Ananda, an Ayurvedic spa in the Himalayas. An Ayurvedic doctor confirmed that I’m a lot of pitta (the fiery dosha) and a bit of vatta (the water one) and said that I had too much stress in my life and that I should do less (easy to say when you’re in a five-star spa in the Himalayas). He did give me tips on what I should eat and drink (less chilli, no yoghurt and pineapples), and the kind of yoga I should do to calm my pitta-dominated mind. Over the next couple of days I had traditional Ayurvedic treatments at Ananda’s spa, ranging from blissfull head massages to slightly scary naked full body massages with hot oil, to jali netti (flushing out of the sinuses with warm water and salt – not that fun but really effective in snot expelling), and ate amazing Ayurvedic meals, such as chickpea curry with wholewheat naan and Thai curry soup with tofu in the treetop restaurant overlooking the Ganges. I felt like 10 million rupees by the end of the four days there and vowed to continue with an Ayurvedic lifestyle back home. While that hasn’t exactly happened, I have actually cut down on chilli – and discovered a corresponding decreased in my fiestyness.

Read all my blogs about India here

Tamil Nadu: the land of temples and French croissants

Why Kerala is God’s country

Palaces, peacocks and paneer in Rajasthan

Mughals, mosques mausoleums in Delhi and Agra