Throughout this trip in India, there have been many times where it feels like I'm living the Indian version of groundhog day, I call it brownhog day. Let's go back to yesterday. We got to Shimla at 6pm. We'd been up since 7am so we'd been traveling for nearly 12 hours and naturally we were anxious to get to our hotel, which we had pre-booked. Well, what do you know, but we get swarmed by very persistent and aggressive luggage wallahs (baggage handlers) who were eager to suggest a hotel for us (for a considerable commission of course which would then make the price skyrocket for us). Despite telling them that we were not interested and that we already has a booking, they continued to follow us and shove pamphlets in our faces. As we continued walking up the steep slope from the station, we managed to shake the luggage wallahs but in the meantime managed to attract more touts seeking hotel commissions with more of the same pamphlets. They tried talking us out of going to the hotel we had booked by quoting us outrageous prices and trying to get us to second-guess our decision. One of them kept refering to Anil as 'friend' which very quickly became aggravating for us. After followign us for nearly 10 minutes, continuously yammering on about why we shouldn't go to our hotel and not listening when we pleaded with him to leave us alone, that trying to convince us to check out his hotel was a lost cause, I said to him "you keep refering to him as 'friend', but friends listen to their friends and you're not listening to us. Please just leave us alone... we're NOT going to your hotel." Quite clearly he didn't understand, or more likely, chose to ignore my statement and kept walking and talking. Finally we stopped in our tracks and told them to continue walking. They reluctantly did. Indians are some of the worst sellers in the world because they don't appeal to people, especially foreigners, in ways that are effective at geeting them to do or buy what they want them to. That's besides the point. My point is that nearly every day is a repeat of every other day. This story is not unique to our arrival in Shimla because it has happened to us everywhere we've been. It's become so predictable now. Unfortunately it takes a lot of energy out of us and as we begin to count down the days left in India, it certainly adds to the excitement we feel for Vietnam. This excitement comes with some guilt however (it wouldn't be a trip to India without feeling guilty) because there's this kind of pressure we feel to constantly be having the time of our lives and when we aren't and complain about the bad parts, we feel like we're in some way disapointing people.
If it hasn't come across clearly enough yet in previous posts, this trip has been a whirlwind of emotions for us -- excitement, frustration, anxiety, happiness, exhileration, nervousness, uncertainty, sadness, guilt, doubt, joy, pleasure, surprise, satisfaction and dissatisfaction. It has been more of a journey (emotionally and physically as much as territorially) than it has been a vacation. For that reason, we are planning on not pushing ourselves in Vietnam. Afterall, we're going to need a vacation from India.
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