My Last Day in India

Well folks, here we are. My last blog entry for my last day in India. This journey has been absolutely amazing and I am genuinely sad to be leaving. I am already planning in my head how I will return so I can explore so much more of this magnificent subcontinent. Perhaps you will see me on the Amazing Race, haha.

My last full day in India consisted of me having to get from Rishikesh to New Delhi and then to the New Delhi airport and onto my plane, which left at 9:45PM. From Rishikesh, it was about an eight hour bus ride to New Delhi, and the first bus out of Rishikesh left at eight in the morning. So, that means I would arrive in Delhi at four in the afternoon at the absolute earliest, assuming nothing goes wrong along the way. The Delhi airport requires you to be there at least three hours before your flight, so again, assuming nothing went wrong, I had almost three hours to get from the bus station in Delhi to the airport in Delhi, and I knew where neither one was. As I ran over these numbers, facts, and variables in my head, I started to think that maybe I should take a night bus instead and just bear a very long wait at the airport, because if something happened to the bus along the way or we hit some really bad traffic going to Delhi, I would more than likely miss my flight to Italy and if I missed my flight to Italy, I would miss the wedding. I had left no wiggle room in my schedule for this type of situation, and then my ashram buddy Praveen told me that bus breakdowns are fairly common on long jaunts across India, so I decided to take a night bus a day early, arrive in Delhi in the early morning hours, and then wait at the airport for SEVENTEEN HOURS until my flight took off. Wow…just saying that number is pretty incredible.

While I wasn’t looking forward to the marathon wait at the airport, I figured I’d be ok. I had my iPod loaded with music and movies (including the Star Wars trilogy…the force was strong with me), I had my journal for drawing and writing, I had a couple of great books I had picked up in various bookstores across the mighty subcontinent, and I had six weeks’ worth of travel memories to sift through and relish as I waited for my plane.

My last evening in Rishikesh was spent dining with my new friends at the ashram. My travel buddy Juliana had taken a day trip to a nearby village to study some Ayurvedic plants and I was starting to get worried that she would not be back in time for us to say goodbye. Thankfully she made it back about half an hour before I had to leave and after a great meal and a long embrace, we parted ways after six amazing weeks of traveling together. With my heavy backpacker’s pack and my regular backpack also weighed down with my old and new possessions, I rushed to get to the Rishikesh bus depot and arrived out of breath and very sweaty, only to end up waiting inside the idling bus for almost an hour before we took off. What I discovered in India is that a lot of the time, the bus doesn’t leave when it is scheduled to leave, it leaves when it is full. Whatever, I didn’t care at that point. I just tried to get comfy and catch a little shut-eye.

Our bus ride was typical: uncomfortable, hot, and dangerous. But it also seemed to go by rather quickly because I managed to get a good amount of sleep. We arrived in Delhi at right past four in the morning and the scene as we all left the bus was ske-tchy. Hardly any streetlights, beggars, filth, and stray dogs and cows everywhere, and already it was probably 90 degrees. I sat down on the dirt and figured out what I should do. I had spoken with a few people at the ashram about what there is to see in Delhi and they had suggested several temples and landmarks to go see. I had wanted to do this, but at this point, I was pretty much flat broke and had left myself 500 rupees for the rest of my time in India. 500 rupees was about 10 dollars and half of that was what it was going to cost me to get to the airport in a rickshaw, so getting around Delhi in a rickshaw and checking out temples for the day was pretty much out of the question. This actually really disappointed me because there was one temple in particular, the Lotus Temple, that I really wanted to see. This temple was a Baha’i temple and was shaped like a lotus flower and from the pictures I saw looked simply amazing. As an architect, my interest was significant, but I would have to accept my situation and just be happy that I even have enough cash to make it to my plane. Oh well, next time. At around 5:30AM and what seemed to be at least a twenty mile rickshaw ride, I arrived at the International Terminal in Delhi airport and now the wait was about to begin…I just had to get inside the terminal. I get to the sliding glass doors and the promise of air-conditioning and cool tile floors to touch when the guard asks for my itinerary. What itinerary? I have a e-ticket in the system, I don’t need an itinerary! Well, apparently I do, and if I don’t have one, I can’t get inside the terminal. And oh the irony, of the ten flights I had this entire trip, this one flight from Delhi to Abu-Dhabi is the ONLY FREAKIN’ FLIGHT for which I didn’t print out an itinerary. I was hot, tired, weighed down with all my bags, and now I was being told I can’t even go inside the airport and wait for my flight. I had to wait outside the terminal in the heat and noise and dust. Not a good time. I walked around for a while in frustration and found a bench by a taxi loading area to sit on for a while. I put my backpack on my lap and wrapped the straps of my big bag around my legs and holy cow (haha, literally) even managed to sleep for twenty minutes or so on this crappy bench but then the heat crept up into the triple digits and any trips to dreamland were immediately cancelled. Thankfully there was a restaurant/lounge area across from the terminal with A/C and much to my surprise, I was able to sit in there without being hassled to buy something. It was now about 6:30AM and I just sat at a table and tried to figure out how the hell I’m going to get a printout of my itinerary. I thought at first it would be easy, since there are internet cafes with printers everywhere in India, but it seems that the Delhi airport was the one place there weren’t any to be found. After much asking and walking around, I found the offices of my airline and begged them to print out a copy of my itinerary so I could just go inside the airport and for the love of god just sit down and rest and know that I can board my flight in 15 hours. Nope! Computer’s down! Wow…I was starting to think that maybe I wasn’t going to be leaving India today. And to make matters even better, along with the probably sixty or seventy pounds I was carrying everywhere with me, a very sharp and deep pain had developed in the front part of my left foot and every step I took was excruciatingly painful. I went back to my table at the lounge area and took out my journal and started to write. Reading back on it now I can still recall the intense frustration I was feeling, especially since about every third word I wrote started with the letter “f” and ended with “uck.” Haha, oh man, I was so pissed.
But, as my time in India had taught me, everything happens for a good reason and there was a good reason I wasn’t able to go into the terminal and there was a good reason I had sat down at this one particular table at this one particular section of the lounge. A few minutes after I was done writing my curse-filled rant, a young Indian man approached me and asked if he could sit down at my table. Rather bluntly, I said sure, I don’t care. I was watching a movie on my iPod so I didn’t really speak to him or take much notice, but then he asked me if I minded if he read. Why the hell would I care if you read? I thought. I said sure, go ahead. So from his backpack he takes out not a magazine, not a paperback, not some work papers. He pulls out a hardcover copy of War and Peace and starts reading it as casually as if he were on a beach in San Diego. Once my frustrations had subsided a bit, I couldn’t help but ask him what he thought of the book, and we proceeded to engage in a fascinating conversation about Tolstoy’s character development and perceptions of French society in Russia. Much to my pleasant surprise, this guy, who was probably no older than twenty two, was incredibly intelligent and excited to converse about not only his current literary conquest, but also his life and present situation as well as mine. We talked for what seemed like over an hour, and then he said something to me I will never forget: “Hey, I was thinking about riding over to the Lotus temple and meditating for a bit. Would you care to join me? I’d be happy to take you.” When I heard those words, I almost broke down in tears I was so happy. It just goes to show that regardless of what events occur, whether you perceive them to be good or bad, just keep an open mind and open heart, and things will work out. I didn’t have to talk to this kid, but I did, and now my one last Indian desire was going to happen.

However, there was a catch. My new friend, whose name was Anituhab (Ani, for short), drove a motorcycle, so that’s what we had to get around on. Thinking back, I don’t think I had ever been on a motorcycle, so this was going to be quite the adventure for me. Along with being a passenger on a crotch-rocket style motorcycle, I also had all my luggage with me. I had thought when I had gotten to the airport I could leave my big backpacker’s bag at a baggage storage place, but was informed that since they were building a new international terminal, any extra space is being used for administrative operations. So it was my entire body, my huge backpack, and my regular backpack sitting on about 10 inches of motorcycle seat. Sure, why not? Seemed like as good a day as any to die. When we started moving I actually felt OK. I had placed my large bag between Ani and me and my regular backpack on my back, so it kind of balanced me out. All I had to hold onto was these little handles on the side of the seats, but as long as the speed was kept under 15 MPH, I was good. But of course, once we got out of the terminal roadway and onto the main highway, the speed went WAY past 15 MPH and then I started to get really nervous. As I’ve previously mentioned, the traffic in India isn’t like traffic here in the States. Things like traffic lanes and traffic signs and traffic lights are merely suggestions to Indian drivers. I had already witnessed many collisions during my stay, so all I really had to comfort me was the thought of “Gee, I hope no one hits us.” Fortunately, Ani was a very safe and conservative driver (unlike most of the rickshaw drivers) so my fear never really reached panic mode. Once I got past the initial fear of being on the back of a motorcycle on the main highway in Delhi, I started really enjoying myself and the combined sensation of exhilaration and fear. The thought was something like “Well, I could die, but until that happens, this is really fun!” After a really long time of riding and weaving through traffic, we reached the Lotus Temple and made our way through the sprawling and beautifully landscaped campus. However, once we got off the motorcycle and had no wind blowing to cool us down, the heat really started to work its magic on me. That day it was over 110 degrees in Delhi and with all my baggage, it wasn’t the most pleasant of situations. As we approached the Temple, we had to stop and remove our shoes and place them in cubbies and wait in line outside in the heat and at one point I recall I was waiting for Ani to remove his shoes and I started to feel light-headed and saw my peripheral vision start to disappear. Fortunately Ani had some water which I grabbed from him and drank without asking. He simply laughed in a very understanding manner and said “Hot, isn’t it?” The temple was a sanctuary in more ways than one. Speaking was forbidden, so it was very quiet as well as cool. Ani and I sat towards the back and meditated silently for almost an hour. I also drew a few sketches of the interior architecture and of the lotus flower shaped design carved in the pews. It was a very beautiful building, so by the time we left, I was spiritually, aesthetically, and physically rejuvenated. We still had plenty of time before I had to return to the airport, so we drove to a nearby shopping plaza and I had my first taste of McDonald’s in India. I had a potato burger with some fries and a coke and it was really good. I ended up getting another one I liked it so much. The fries are basically the same, and of course, there’s no beef on the menu. Not a lot of ketchup to be found, either. Ani was still hungry after so we went to a Ruby Tuesday’s in the same plaza and watched some cricket and talked more about War and Peace and our plans for the future. After we had worn out our welcome in the nice air-conditioned restaurant, we got back on the bike with all my cumbersome luggage and Ani took me around some of the more popular tourist sites in Delhi. We rode by a few different temples and parks and I took some pictures, but after a few destinations, it was time to get back. Ani and I rode back to the airport and made it in one piece to the exact same spot where we left many hours before. We exchanged emails, said our goodbyes, embraced, and then he sped off into the Delhi evening. What an awesome chance meeting.

Now, finally, I was able to get inside the terminal (by the McDonald’s we found an internet café with a printer for my itinerary) and just relaaax until it was time to fly. I went in to the bathroom and changed clothes, brushed my teeth, and realized I hadn’t worn jeans or shoes in a month and a half. I didn’t miss it either, but probably best for the flight. After an hour of reading, I checked my bag, went through security, and waited at the gate. Much to my happiness, they were televising a World Cup match, but I was told unless I was drinking, I couldn’t sit at the bar and watch. Fine. Then I noticed an attractive young girl sitting at the bar watching the game, not drinking. I brought this up to the bartender and he rolled his eyes and said, “Fine, you can watch, but if customer wants to sit in your seat you have to leave.” I looked at the empty seats to my right, looked at the empty seats to my left, laughed, and said OK. The final bit of good fortune on my last day in India came as we boarded the plane. I was flying to Milan, Italy with a layover in Abu-Dhabi through an airline called Etihad Airlines, which was based in Abu-Dhabi. As you probably know, Abu-Dhabi has a lot of money, so the airline was quite luxurious. I boarded the plane and shuffled through 1st class, which was ridiculous in its opulence, and wished that I had thousands to spare for a comfy seat and good food. Then I was walking through business class, which wasn’t as ridiculous as 1st class, but still way better than any “peasant class” I had ever seen, and noticed that my economy class seat number was the same as this business class seat. I stood for a moment looking back and forth between my ticket and the seat number and then a very nice flight attendant confirmed that this was in fact the correct seat. Did I get an upgrade I didn’t know about? Nope, this was just how Etihad rolled. We got oodles of money, so we’re gonna make our economy class look like regular business class. Score! I was excited. The seat was SO comfortable and cushy. Plus I got a traveler’s kit with a sleep mask, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and socks (!!!). The food was amazing, the entertainment center was great, and there was no one in the seat next to me! I was flying in comfort. I was also highly entertained by the girl sitting across the aisle from me who was from India but lived in Ireland, so she had a most excellent combination of accents for me to enjoy. The only negative part of the flight was when we had our pre-meal fruit salad and I noticed a single pea pod on top of the salad. Strange, why would they have a single pea pod with all this fruit? I hadn’t even seen a green bean in all of India, so this was kind of strange. But, I do love green beans, so I grabbed the pod and quickly munched it down. Right away my taste buds informed me that’s not a pea pod, that’s a chili pepper. My mouth ignited with unexpected and intense spicy pain. No amount of water I drank could quell the fire on my tongue and lips, so just like the weather in India, I had to sit there and tolerate it. It sucked.
But, after a few hours, we made it to Abu-Dhabi airport (with its free internet) and I hung out with my Indian/Irish plane buddy and checked World Cup scores online and asked myself when I got to Italy, which flavor of gelato will I eat first?

Thank you to everyone who read my blog and even though this last one comes about a year after the events, I appreciate all your comments and positive feedback. This trip was the most amazing of my life and I would highly recommend going to India to anyone, so if you do, get in touch with me so we can talk about it!

-Matan

Leaving Dharamsala, Rishikesh Round 2, and My First Ashram Experience

Hello, friends! So yes, it has clearly been a long time since my last blog entry and for that I apologize. Much has happened since I have left India, and now that all the dust has (long since) settled from my travels, I am finally ready to write the final installations of my India blog. So since we last spoke, I had been in Dharahmsala dancing with Ms. Tibet and marveling at the natural beauty of the Himilayas. I had previously written about going back to Rishikesh and spending time at the ashram, but I never did talk about getting back there, so here goes: Our bus ride back to Rishikesh was quite an adventure. We took a night bus to save money and just figured we’d sleep on the bus. Our past experience getting to Dharamsala should’ve reminded us that any kind of rest or relaxation on a bus in India was somewhat of an impossibility, since the roads are either dirt or in disrepair, the turns are sharp, fast, and reckless, and the horns are insanely loud, even with earplugs. We left Dharamsala once I was able to find a functioning ATM to be able to buy my ticket. This in itself took almost half the day since there were 3 ATMs in the town and on that day, all 3 weren’t working. There was a fourth, actually, but you had to be a member of that particular bank to withdraw money and in order to be a member you had to be a citizen of India. So, my only option was to wait around until one of the ATMs got fixed. We began our 475 kilometer journey in the evening and from the very beginning it was a nail-biter. We had to descend the mountain on which Dharamsala was located and the path was narrow and full of turns. You literally couldn’t relax because if you did, the force from the turns would send you flying from your seat, so you had to hang on to whatever you could at all times. A positive note from this hellish descent was that during this time, the sun was setting over the mountains and the view was absolutely stunning. In between bumps and turns, I was able to admire the tranquil view and appreciate the amazing natural beauty that was so abundant in India. Then a hairpin turn would send me flying into the aisle. We did stop a few times on the way to refuel, stretch, and eat. During our first stop I exited the bus and noticed a nice, big, fan-like pattern of orange vomit on the side of the bus: A testament to the gut-wrenching experience an Indian bus ride can be. I was just glad it wasn’t me. Throughout my time in India I would find myself in certain places or situations and would pause and think to myself, “Wow, it would REALLY suck to get sick right now” and I concluded that a 9-hour bus ride would be one of the worst. I was almost a month into my journey and still no “Delhi belly” so I was feeling most fortunate. Anyway, we were given about 45 minutes to eat dinner at the gas station/restaurant where we had stopped. After making a pit stop at a bathroom that would make your average porta-potty seem luxurious, I went into the restaurant to get my grub on. While in line, I befriended an Indian guy around my age and he invited me to eat with him. He even insisted on paying for my dinner. At first I refused, because I still had my Indian salesman repellent mindset and was convinced that if he bought me dinner, I would have to buy something from him. But, since he was not a salesman and seemed very nice, I accepted. I even let him choose my food. We sat down and I proceeded to have the best meal of Indian food I had ever had. I kept asking my new friend what it was so I could remember for later…but seven months later, I forgot. I was very hungry and the food was so amazing that I ate it all very quickly and even asked if there was time for seconds. During our dinner, my friend (whose name I sadly cannot recall) asked me all about my perceptions of India and then told me that while all my destinations were interesting and significant in their own ways, the only way to see the “real” India was to go to the villages and see how life happens there. He was a very smart and ambitious young man, but told me of the difficulties of succeeding in India due to overwhelming poverty of the villages and overabundance of smart, driven, talented people. I remember thinking to myself: Man, if India ever gets rich, we are screwed. By that I mean that a large percentage of the people I met in India was very intelligent, motivated, and driven to succeed. However, due to overpopulation and crushing poverty, opportunities are few and far between. In the U.S. it seems to be quite the opposite. My dinner buddy told me that intelligence is one of the most important things one can possess. During our conversation, I told him I was from Israel and his eyes lit up and he told me that the man he respects most in the world is Jewish, and then proceeded to make me guess who it was. After a long string of “uuuuum”s I finally landed on the correct answer: Albert Einstein. After the best Indian meal of my life, we got back on the vomit-decorated bus and continued our nocturnal journey through the mountains of northern India. I was listening to my iPod for about half an hour and then it happened: a small but steadily growing discomfort in my stomach. This is it, I thought. After a month of being here and now in the worst possible spot, I’m going to puke my guts out and/or have diarrhea and there’s absolutely nowhere to go. I’m trapped. Shit. My inadvertent negative mental cheerleading of the situation wasn’t helping in any way. I was hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable as all hell, and now part of my brain is telling me that the next six hours are quite possibly going to be the worst of my life. The other part of my brain was fighting a losing battle with its evil half, trying to convince me that it’s all going to be ok, it’s probably just a little indigestion, or at worst you may just puke out the window once and that’ll be it. All I could do is breathe slowly and try to think happy thoughts…quite the challenge at the time. We kept on rolling through the darkness and while the stomach pains got worse and worse, there was no “moment of release” one way or the other, so all I could do was deal with the pain. We finally stopped at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere and I bought myself a Coke in the hopes of slowly sipping it and calming down the brawl in my stomach. Once when I was eleven years old I ate some Michael Jordan fruit snacks really fast and then vomited, no lie, seventeen times. Afterwards though, I slowly sipped on some Pepsi and felt much better, so I was hoping this Coke would have the same effects, sans vomit. And you know what? It DID! Hooray!!! I had dodged the Indian food bullet once again and after sipping the Coke, the pain slowly subsided. I concluded that it was in fact indigestion and next time don’t eat your Indian food so fast, you little piggy. Seriously though, I can still clearly recall how amazing that food was. Oh man, I want some right now. We arrived at the bus station at about 4 in the morning, so it was still dark outside. We had arrived in the city of Haridwar, which is near Rishikesh, so now we had to get to Rishikesh, but the first bus going there wouldn’t leave until 6. At first I was insistent on waiting because I didn’t want to pay for a rickshaw, but after sitting on the ground waiting at the bus station for about ten minutes I said ok, let’s take a rickshaw. The rickshaw ride we took was something I’ll forever remember. The ride was about an hour long and it was at dawn, so the beautiful morning light was steadily increasing, and the whole way to Rishikesh, the driver was blasting Shakira from his rickshaw’s speakers. It was beautiful. We even stopped a few times along the way to take pictures of the sunrise over the mountains. I was still bathing in the gigantic wave of relief that had washed over me from avoiding being sick on an Indian bus, so anything and everything during that morning seemed beautiful to me, including Shakira blasting in my ear at 5AM. We got to Rishikesh and headed to our ashram, but our room wouldn’t be ready until the next day, so we would have to spend one night in a hotel. Ok, no problem. We’ll just go back to the same hotel we stayed at previously. We did so, but they were sold out! Ok, no problem, we’ll just go to another one. Sold out! We went through a few more like this, but finally found one. At this point we were both exhausted and just wanted to get some rest. After settling in, Juliana went to the internet café and I decided to get some reading done. I lay on my bed, sweating as usual, and started reading a most entertaining book about a British youngster traveling in India. I was pretty engrossed in the book so I didn’t notice at first, but after a while I saw a few tiny green insects crawling on me. I put my book aside to brush them off, but then I noticed that they were ALL OVER my body and my sheets, so I got up and brushed them off and shook out my bedsheet and then realized that they were probably coming in through the cracks in the window and door frames. Duct tape to the rescue again! I sealed off the room, but only after I liberally sprayed myself and the door and window cracks with my bug spray. Not a good decision. After lying back down on my bed, the air thick with the aroma of bug spray, I tried to read, but very soon I started having difficulty breathing. I had never had asthma or anything like that, so I had to really restrain myself from freaking out. I concluded that it was the bug spray combined with the lack of ventilation that was causing my breathing difficulties, so I just went outside and after a few moments of breathing in the “fresh” Indian air, my breathing went back to normal. So now our dilemma is that if we keep the door closed, I’ll asphyxiate thanks to the bug spray, and if we keep the door open, the little green bugs will take over. We decided to leave. We payed the hotel lady half of our bill (which was not even two dollars) and thankfully found a decent room nearby that even had a swamp cooler. This device used water to cool the room, but it made everything extremely humid, so you had to choose: cool and wet, or hot and dry. We finally went with hot and dry. We were wet enough with our own sweat, we didn’t need a swamp cooler making us wetter. The next day we checked into our ashram and settled in. I honestly had no idea what to expect from this experience. I envisioned lots of yoga, meditation, chanting, and mind-expansion, and that seemed cool to me. What the ashram experience ended up being was somewhat similar to my guesses, just with lots and lots of free time thrown in the mix. We stayed in a dormitory style room at the ashram and had breakfast, lunch, and dinner there at the same times every day, but aside from that, there were no real obligations we had to meet. We were free to do whatever we wanted. For the first few days I attended several of their yoga classes and really enjoyed them, but then the yoga classes were interrupted by a group of folks who came to the ashram specifically for a 10-day yoga course, so no more free yoga classes. So now I really had a lot of free time, which I mostly spent by reading and wandering through Rishikesh and its surrounding areas. I also spent a lot of time sketching the various Hindu deities that appeared in statue form around the ashram. One of my favorite parts of the ashram was the people I met when I was there. People of all ages and backgrounds were there, and for all varieties of reasons, as well. I met a Canadian couple who told me amazing stories of deflecting baboon attacks during their travels in Africa. I met a Brazilian man who lives in Canada who quit his job as a scientist to come here and study to become an Ayurvedic doctor. I’m convinced that this man was one of the smartest people I had ever met. Every conversation we had I came away with incredible amounts of knowledge that he passed along with great enthusiasm. Through the conversations I had with the people I met, I was exposed to so much knowledge and ways of thinking that simply don’t exist in the western hemisphere (or at least that I hadn’t been exposed to). I met a couple of Hare Krishna followers there who had actually opened a temple in San Diego back in the 1970s. The conversations I had with them got really philosophical and abstract almost to the point where I wanted to cut them off and say: Ok, you realize that everything you’re saying is total bullshit, right? But they were so enthusiastic and friendly that I would just listen and in the brief moments they would give me to answer, I would reply with my own succinct opinions, which were usually contrary to theirs. It was all very interesting though, because it made me aware of how much more knowledge and religious scripture was out there that I had no idea existed. Towards the end of the stay, I wandered out one evening and sat on the banks of the Ganges and reflected upon my time in India. Although I had Polish death metal playing through my iPod headphones, I was calm, reflective, and a little bit sad to be leaving the place I had called home for the last six weeks. But, I was also excited to be going to a completely different environment. After a while, the crowds, pollution, heat, and overall filthiness of India can wear on you. I was on my way to Cuneo, Italy to see my good friend Tyler get married and I could almost taste the gelato. Speaking of ice cream and filth, after my reflection on the Ganges, I went to a local shop to get a mango popsicle for dessert. I had finished the delicious treat before I got back to the ashram, but I still had the popsicle stick and the wrapper in my hand and no trash can in sight. Walking through the crowded filthy street, I spent at least ten minutes trying to find a place to dispose of my litter, while the entire time it was dripping sticky, sugary mango juice onto my hand. As I was searching, I thought to myself ”just drop it on the street, there’s a million other pieces of litter, your little stick and wrapper won’t make a bit of difference.” But I told myself no, I was not going to perpetuate the problem of garbage everywhere. I was going to keep looking for a proper means of disposal. Eventually, I found a small yellow trash can outside of a gem shop on the main street of Rishikesh. I disposed of my trash with a clear conscious and a sticky hand. Mission accomplished. Beside the gem shop with the yellow trash can, there was a book store that I decided to check out. I had started leafing through a book that suggested Jesus had traveled to India in his youth when I noticed the owner of the gem shop exit the shop and pick up the little yellow trash can. Hmmm, I thought to myself, I wonder where he’s taking that trash can? Just as I finished that thought, the owner inverted the trash can and dumped its contents, along with my mango popsicle stick and wrapper, on the street. Awesome. Well folks, thanks for reading! Coming up next, my final day in India and how I spent it. Hint: I wore a helmet. -Matan