Usually jetlag is kind of douchie. You flip to the other side of the
world and your circadian rhythms want to put you to sleep at noon when
it is now midnight. After that, you find yourself sleepy or wanting to
take naps at the most inappropriate times—like when you should be out
holding a pit viper or blowing it kisses because it is very "fliendly".
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| The View from our Hostel |
The aforementioned is the mildly douchie side of jetlag. The more traumatic side of
jetlag is displacement, which for some is culture shock and for others
is all out geographical, cultural, and linguistic induced depression.
We have had neither. We got off the plane on the other side of the
world at what would have been 2 p.m. Mountain Central time (2:30 a.m. in
Delhi time; and yes, they are off by a half hour for some strange
reason) and went to sleep right away with the help of a sleeping aid.
That is the key: go to bed while it is dark regardless of whether or not
you are tired. Therefore, we have had almost no jetlag and have been
on an Indian sleeping schedule from the moment we got here.
To start our official second day in
Delhi, we purchased breakfast on the roof of our guest house and then
walked to the train station, which was about 3 blocks away. We walked
onto the platform and were immediately stopped by a guy that asked to
see our tickets. He grabbed Annie’s ticket out of her hand and started
to walk in the opposite direction of the train platform, followed by,
"You must come with me to find out where you are departing from." A
second guy walked up and said, “Your train has been canceled.” The
first guy hushed the second guy and then Annie ran up and grabbed her
ticket from the first guy and we both returned to the platform to figure
out where our train was located.
A minute later the
first guy showed up and told us that our train was located on Platform
5. It turned out that he was really an employee of the train station
just trying to help out a couple of foreigners, but since there are so
many scams always going on, it is difficult to discern the good between
the bad and the ugly. It is important to note another phenomenon you
will encounter while traveling: it is the “You are a foreigner and I can
control you by taking power from you by demanding from you your
ticket/receipt/map/whatever.” When you don’t hand it over they try and
take it from you to assume control of the situation.
This technique may not even involve a scam, as was the case
at the train station, but in male dominated societies, (especially ones
like in India that do not want to lose face) it is the worst. For an
example of the scam involved in this, think back to the Easy Cab
experience: our cab driver asked to see our receipt for our prepaid cab
and as Annie showed him, he just yanked them out of her hand and in the
chaos of trying to load our bags, he kept the receipt and then demanded
payment again when we were dropped off at our guesthouse. We refused of
course, but it is yet another way others try to control your actions.
One tries to hold onto whatever it is they are needing help with, but in
the helpless state a foreigner in a strange land finds themselves in,
it is inevitable that every once in a while they were temporarily gain
the upper hand.
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| Me and Rej |
Your job is to outwit them and regain it, but to do so
in a way that does not cause an episode or upset your easily displaced
delicate water balance. The more you are around it the more you are
able to react in an appropriate manner and it is these skills I love
honing when I’m traveling. It is more than street-creds, it is an
awareness of the world around you that can only be gleaned from the
pressure cooker of displacement. Traveling in majority/third-world
countries is a maze of psychology and a battle of wits that goes beyond
chess and opens up parts of yourself that you never knew existed; it
really is marvelous and it replaces absurd fears that most of us live
with for all of our lives… when really there is no need to live with
them.
Our second day in Delhi to be continued…
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