Titra Yatra: Part 2 (and Final Part) - WALKING, QUITTING, AND HITCHHIKING

Yeah...I can't do it.

Let me explain. I'll start from the beginning of the day.

I left my hotel at 6:00am and starting walking then, in the dark, to avoid the sun. Pretty standard stuff, I passed some industrial stuff, a beach, some people living in huts and tents and stuff, but there was very little places to step off the road today and get a cold drink and a meal. Actually, there weren't any. When I did find one, when the sun had come up, at 9:30am, it was the dingiest place I've ever eaten in, and I've eaten in some dingy places. They only served flat, circular bread that was all pockmarked, looking exactly like pancakes, but tasting nothing like it.

I was thinking: "OK, I will wait here for about 7 hours, until the sun goes down again."

And then I realized: "I am never going to Kerala."

It became clear that I was quitting. I hadn't formally formulated that thought in my head, but it was bubbling up from my subconscience to the surface of my mind. I looked around at the people around me. Noone here, out in the middle of NH-17, nowhere near a sizeable city, speaks any English. My Hindi is more useful here than English, even though people speak very little of that, too, since Karnataka has its own lanaguage. I was looking at the people in rags, tattered clothing, and feeling a little sad about the world around me. And what was the world around me, anyway? Where was I, how did I get here?

So it occured to me that there were three reasons I couldn't go on:
1. The heat - obviously, which meant I couldn't walk during the day and had to wait out the sun for 6 or 7 hours every day, which meant that...
2. I couldn't psychologically handle sitting out in the middle of NH-17 for most of my waking hours for the next 40 or 50 days, or however long this was going to take. To add to that, the places to eat seemed to be becoming sparser, and you never have a choice of what you are going to eat, so it's just a little sustenance to get you by.
3. I realized, with some degree of horror, last night, why I am so intolerant of this sun. Or at least partly why. I am taking the antibiotic doxycycline, a well-known side effect of which is "sun sensitivity."

Plus I'm nursing some pretty bad skin burns, and yes, I used tons of sunscreen. In light of all this, I just couldn't keep going. I knew I was able to quit when I realized that I wouldn't have any regrets about quitting. I simply had no interest in going on. Unlike the trail, when it's impossible to get off because you know you'll regret it later, here the decision was easy. In some ways, this was much harder than the trail. Well, obviously, or I wouldn't have quit so early.

So - how to get out of this? Well, I stood out on the road and flagged down a truck. You see these trucks all the time, carrying cargo here and there, extremely colorful, painted all over with graphics and slogans. These guys also spoke no English. They didn't understand "Where are you going?" So I said "Kahha jata hey?", and luckily they spoke some Hindi. "Hubli," they said. This is about 150 km away, but I didn't really care, anywhere was fine, so I jumped in. The ride was pretty quiet, we couldn't communicate with each other, but unbelievably (or maybe not, considering this is India), the truck broke down after about an hour or so. So they went to work under the truck, in the middle of the highway, trying to repair it. One hour passed. Two hours passed. Finally, I got out, said I was leaving, and flagged down a truck going the opposite direction. This guy's name was Muhammed and he was going to Karwar. I also had to find all that out via Hindi. Well, Karwar was just fine, considering I had started there in the morning, but somehow that felt like a long time ago. It was a good ride, we stopped at a place and ate some fish curry, everyone there was really interested in me. Actually that is a trademark of this entire walking trip - you don't really see westerners out here. You see them on motorbike from time to time, tearing down the highway on their way to Gokarn, Mangalore, or Kochi down south, or Goa up north. But I don't imagine you see many people on foot. Muhammed dropped me off right outside Karwar and it was just a 5 minute walk back in. I went directly to see my friend Ryees who owns this internet place, who had to admit he wasn't really surprised to see me back.

Well, maybe it was foolhardy, but I am proud of what I did accomplish, even if I didn't get very far. I had a fun time trying to do it, and I had fun today getting out of it.

What will I do now? I might stay in the south for a bit, check out Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but more and more I'm thinking I'd love to make it back to Mussoorie before I leave for wherever I'm going next. My visa expires at the end of March so I don't have a whole lot of time left here.

Thanks for everyone's encouragement...sorry if I dissapointed anyone. Especially you, Denzil, haha. An English friend, Denzil, who never says anything without injecting a lot of intensity, told me "You better make it to Kerala...I'll be fookin' dissapointed if you don't." Ah well, I gave it my best.

Looking a bit dejected. This is where I quit, and that's the truck that gave me a ride out. Yep, that's my outfit...kurta I picked up in Karwar to try and cover more skin, that kind of skirt thing, and the bandana...minus the bandana I usually had over my face.

I'd like to send a shoutout to Krishnamurti real quick as thanks for being my only traveling companion on this abbreviated quest:

Student: What do you mean by ordinary?

Krishnamurti: To be like the rest of men; with their worries, with their corruption, violence, brutality, indifference, callousness. To want a job, to want to hold on to a job, whether you are efficient or not, to die in the job. That is what is called ordinary - to have nothing new, nothing fresh, no joy in life, never to be curious, intense, passionate, never to find out, but merely to conform. That is what I mean by ordinary. It is called being bourgeois. It is a mechanical way of living, a routine, a boredom.

Student: How can we get rid of being ordinary?

Krishnamurti: How can you get rid of being ordinary? Do not be ordinary. You cannot get rid of it. Just do not be it.

Student: How, Sir?

Krishnamurti: There is no "how". You see that is one of the most destructive questions: "Tell me how"? Man has always been saying, throughout the world, "Tell me how". If you see a snake, a poisonous cobra, you do not say, "Please tell me how to run away from it". You run away from it. So in the same way, if you see that you are ordinary, run, leave it, not tomorrow, but instantly.

God, I need a drink after today. I'm gonna go get it. Cheers to all my friends and family - here's to never giving in to ordinary.