Even if we can't go back, we can always return. On India

This is a post that the sister of my friend Amy wrote about traveling back to India after 17 years, to reactivate the Hindi part of her brain and drive a rickshaw: Juli St George - After 17 years I returned to my India.  I have never met Juli in real life, but she was one of my first guides to the subcontinent for my 2008 trip. As crazy as things got during my stay, a part of me always kept saying: if J. as a white north american woman was able to survive, so can I with my fake Indian looks. 

My aunt Yesy (black and red) and me (pink and white) wearing sarees. 

And I did, I lived to tell the story of my crazy first solo trip to non other place than Incredible India. 

I don't think I have ever written this phrase before, but I often say it in conversations with friends: I am so glad I traveled through India on my own when I was 23 years old. That decision might be one of the most important ones I have ever made, and it forever changed my brain and the way I see the world.

Photo: Peter Aronson. This book seller girl got kind of famous because when Angelina Jolie visited Mumbai she described her sight in an interview. My uncle Peter became friends with the girl before her fame, and they would have short talks whenever we saw her during a traffic stop. 

I have never in my life been as confused as I was after my first month or two traveling there: because of my Indian looks people spoke to me in more languages than I had ever heard before, many of them I wasn't even aware they existed before the trip, and much less that they had their own alphabets and writing systems. Then when I started working as a correspondent for Marie Claire magazine I had to face many problems I did not imagine were even possible to have. For example, when I was on a rickshaw heading out to interview Aparna Bhat, an attorney who has worked on cases of rape victims who refuse the sadly common "solution" of marrying their rapist instead of pursuing a criminal case against them, I realized that having the address and a map were not going to be enough to get me to her office. The rickshaw driver was illiterate (a very common occurrence in India) and many traffic signs for avenues and drives were only in Hindi, which I could not read. Once I realized this I asked the driver to stop and let me ask some pedestrians for directions. I asked them in English, showing them my printed map (oh, those glorious times before google maps and having gps on your mobile phone), and then they would translate direction instructions for the driver in Hindi. To my surprise, my method worked. And I even got on time to my interview, despite the confusion and the traffic in Delhi.

I got to see the Taj Mahal from the river, riding a small raft with an Indian family.

Last week I engaged in a Twitter --I refuse to acknowledge the name change made by mr Pelon Musk-- fight with a random stranger girl who apparently is or wants to be a traveler influencer. She was giving sanitary recommendations to travel to India according to her personal experience during a 2 (maybe 3) week trip she had recently made. Her advice was to carry your own plate and silverware at all times, bring your own bedsheets and pillow to sleep and other things that I found honestly impractical and a little bit ridiculous. Given that she seemed at least 10, if not 15 years younger than me I didn't wanted to deprecate her advice, but I tried to give my own perspective saying that yes, it is important to make yourself sure that you are drinking purified water instead of tap, and to carry around sanitizing gel, other of her recommendations might be a bit to extreme. I then emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated, at least against typhus before traveling, and the fact that even if traveling in India feels sometimes like a hard kick in your face you have to also let yourself go to some extent in order to truly enjoy the experience.  The girl took it badly and gave me a mean response, which I answered by mentioning that I had lived and traveled in India  for six months. And then she assumed that I probably spent most or all of that time at a yoga retreat in a sheltered space for foreigners. It really made me laugh. And before I was able to reply to her, she blocked me. Oh, well.

A very cute girl who posed for me in Banganga, an area famous for the Banganga Tank, considered a sacred oasis on Malabar Hill, with a history dating back to the Hindu epic Ramayana.

For the record, even if I declare myself a yoga fan and I started practicing a year before traveling to India, I did not take even one yoga lesson there. Why? First, because I was trying to avoid hanging out too much with the herd of western spiritual seekers that visit India every year to find enlightenment, theirselves, or something in between. Second, because I knew beforehand, and was told by my aunt and a yoga teacher, that any serious yoga training takes at least a month. And I didn't get to spend such a long uninterrupted time in any city I visited. Even if I spent 5 weeks or more at my aunt and uncle's place in Mumbai, it was usually one week or less at a time, as a strategic stop to wash my clothes and get a few nights of sleep on a good bed in a room with a portable AC unit; a real luxury that was not at all standard for my trip. In all the other places I stayed --except for Kuni's place in Delhi-- there was no AC, just fans if anything.

A glimpse of the sleeping arrangements in Banganga, Mumbai.

And about what and where to eat and to eat in India without getting sick, I have to admit that I started super careful under my aunt Yesy's guidance: only going to very clean restaurants, using always cutlery and not my hands, and making sure the utensils were clean by wiping them before using with a napkin and drinking water. As time went by I relaxed my standards, and by the end of the trip I ate with my friend Loren at a couple of street stalls both in Delhi and in Agra. I still looked for food that had not been sitting for a while and was freshly cooked and preferably fried (because frying kills most germs). But I am sure that Yesy and Peter would have disapproved of my recklessness, especially on the occasion when I sat down on the sidewalk to eat. On my favor I can say my hands were clean, and that I didn't get sick, which I thank to: a) progressive exposure to street food, b) growing up with my biochemist mom who thought me the difference between a serious biohazard and a very mild one, c) getting vaccinated against typhus, and d) good luck, because there is always some credit to our good fortune when we travel. 

My aunt Yesy and Peter, her husband.

The time I spent in Mumbai being mistaken as a Mumbaikar landed me my first byline in National Geographic: I got to write a very short piece on a suggested walking itinerary around the city. I was published as part of a special edition for Traveler, on walking as a "new" way of getting to know cities. The little girl in me who grew up reading old Nat Geo editions at my grandma's house was delighted with the milestone when I finally got my hands on the printed magazine. And then, me being me, my friend Paco Conde made me realize that the article had a typo in my last name: it listed "del Corral" instead of del Moral. Not my mistake, just a running joke I had with the design team that ended up making it to the final version of the article because apparently too much perfection is unattainable for me since it ruins joy.

An engagement party I got to attend as the official photographer.

Now that I have been living in New York for a few years I still often get mistaken for an Indian or Indian american. And I do have a lot of Indian friends from different parts of the subcontinent --Punjab, Assam, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and more. I am sure that I can never go back to the India I knew as a young twenty-something woman. But somehow I know India is always there, waiting for me to return to visit the places where my friends grew up, the spots that I did not get to cross out of my bucket list almost 20 years ago.