On reflection I left India about two days after I started to get the hang of it. I'd learned to laugh at the frustration and the disappointment, and I'd learned to lower my expectations until I was pretty much satisfied with whatever I could get.
By the time I got my ass rubber stamped out of Indira Gandhi I was ready for home, but I hadn't bargained on how being back in England would feel. I'd expected a culture shock going on the outward journey, but I hadn't anticipated getting another one on the return home.
For example, even as I was sat in Glasgow Central Station eating a pasty last Sunday, and feeling glad to be back in the UK, there were rumblings of discontent. There's a big screen in the train station with rolling news on it. Rolling news from Sky no less. If there's one thing that could make you throw acid in your own eyes, Sky News is it. The latest John Terry losing the England captaincy bollocks was on a loop, and apparently Joey Barton, a footballer so stupid and with an even more questionable history than John Terry, had sent some tweets on Twitter, and it was oh so controversial. And this is what passes for news! Two contemptible and thoroughly stupid idiots who've only escaped a life in the gutter by being able to kick a pig's bladder around, are doing and saying stuff, and it's being reported as if it's Moses coming down the mountain with the ten commandments. Bloody hell.
Then I spent the day on Tuesday jumping through hoops for the YHA before being told Thanks but No Thanks. On Wednesday my brain was still mashed but I tried to do some bike maintenance. I was so out of it I could barely recollect my own name by this point, and to make things worse the other two guys at Sustrans had one of those terrible radio phone ins on. People debating whether they should have to sell their homes to go into care, and then someone on advising people how to save money by boiling up potato peelings to make a nutritious gloop, and telling us not to go shopping when we're hungry and that kind of wisdom from on high. I could barely stand it.
I went to Tesco on Thursday to buy some rice. I couldn't believe the vast array of goods on display, and what was worse I couldn't take listening to people trying to decide between the various brands on offer. Then a man at the checkout was discussing the ridiculousness of pricing 240 tea bags at less than the packs of 180. I started to feel like I was going mental.
All this stuff about choice and degrees of satisfaction seems superfluous to me now. India reduced my expectations, until I was happy to get something. Every day I got a meal and a place to stay, and that was enough. It was hard to find shops, but the joy that can be felt from finding a big jar of porridge or some chocolate milk is beyond description. Seeing Dean running out into the road after three days in the wilderness and gleefully showing me butter and cheese and Snickers bars, and pointing excitedly to sliced bread in the window. The average Tesco shopper does not understand such feelings.
On Friday I got a letter from Simon Bailes Peugeot asking me what I thought of the MOT service I got a month ago. How satisfied was I with about 20 separate aspects of the service I got. I found this bewildering. I wanted an MOT, I got an MOT. Job done. I was satisfied. With time in India in the bank, this sort of feedback seemed nuts. I didn't get a letter from the Hotel Godawari in Roorkee asking me how satisfied I was with the service there. The young man in the orange hoodie who brought me my dinner and the older guy who spoke English and who talked to us a bit, we had a transaction in that particular time and space, and then we moved on. I smiled and gave them a tip. They seemed happy. It was in the moment. If I'm honest I found it slightly confusing that I couldn't tell who the staff were because they had no names badges or other corporate wear on, and the sound of a guy hitting a doorframe with a hammer while I was ordering might have normally been a bit off-putting, but this was India. I took things at face value, and I got a meal and a bed for the night, and that was good enough. And the next morning I moved on.
The same thing happened with Orange on Friday aswell. I rang them up to ask them a question about how much it costs to send texts to India. They answered my question, but then they wanted me to fill a survey in on how they'd answered my question. What do you mean? I said. I asked a question, you answered it. I didn't know the answer, now I do. That was the entirety of it. I don't want to make a sitcom out of it.
Since I got home, I haven't had the telly on for 5 days, then on Saturday I broke my duck by putting the Six Nations Rugby on. When I first switched the telly on, I accidentally turned a programme on where some yuppies were wanting to take that fantastic house they've got in the city, and trade it in for an even more fantastic house in the country. The smug bastards. Perhaps next week, instead of Escape to the Country we'll see them starring in an episode of Escape to the Underpass, where they get to swap their quarter of a million pad in Central London for a night sleeping under a rickshaw by the underpass at New Delhi railway station, next to a pile of dogs? What's their budget? Nil?
The cold weather hasn't helped. I feel like I'm living in a fridge, which is harder to take, because my sunburn has started to peel. And every time I fall asleep I dream of Delhi and the road to Rishikesh. I had a nightmare about having to build a wheel somewhere on NH58 a few nights ago. The good news is I keep waking up next to Ruth, and I feel like we're laughing more than before I left. Some of this is because I was so stressed with the packing before I left, and getting myself in a tangle choosing what to take, she told me today if I'd missed my flight she would have sent me in a taxi. Apparently I was lucky not to have one of the many bikes I was considering taking wrapped round my head I was being so infuriatingly indecisive.
In case all of this sounds really negative, it's not all bad. I am loving being back in the beautiful English countryside, I feel lucky to live where I live, to have the people in my life that I have, and to have a nice home. It's an adjustment that's all.
Then today I put the telly on for the second time, and before I watched the latest Six Nations instalment (another thing which makes me proud to be British) I watched Harry Hill's TV Burp. And I laughed, and laughed. And I remembered another reason why it's great to be British. It's because we're good at laughing at ourselves. We're good at pointing at our own pomposity and seriousness, and ridiculing the absurdity of it all.
And I realised that's the greatest gift I got from my India trip. I remembered to laugh at myself. Because taking myself seriously doesn't work. All that happens is that I get myself tied up in knots. And a lot of the things I worry about are laughable, and so I laughed at those things, and at myself. And this afternoon I wore a buff around my forehead and danced around with Ruth to a song by the Specials called Do Nothing. We had a laugh and a sing along with the words
'Nothing ever changes, oh no, I'm just living in a life without meaning'.
And even if that were true, that my life is without meaning, and that nothing ever changes, I'm still grateful for it. I'm thankful for all the chances I've had, to do things, and to go places, that some can only dream of. When I think back to being an oddity on the road to Rishikesh, being stared at by people who maybe live their entire lives within a tiny geographical area, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see my own country and others, both from inside and out.
And when I reflect on last year, I think I was a lot like India Guy from Rishikesh, having a tantrum because I'd got a Chicken Sizzler when I'd ordered something else. Being disappointed. I was like that in Scotland, and in Wales, and on my York to Durham ride, and on some other bikes rides I went on. I spent so long moaning that I didn't get what I wanted, that I forgot to be grateful for what I got.
I spent so long reviewing my experiences, as if they were a customer survey, and worrying about degrees of satisfaction, that I forgot to say thank you. Thank you for my life and everything in it. For everything I've got, and everything I've had.
And so if I learned nothing else from India, except to remember to laugh at myself and say thank you for things, it was still worth going.
By the time I got my ass rubber stamped out of Indira Gandhi I was ready for home, but I hadn't bargained on how being back in England would feel. I'd expected a culture shock going on the outward journey, but I hadn't anticipated getting another one on the return home.
For example, even as I was sat in Glasgow Central Station eating a pasty last Sunday, and feeling glad to be back in the UK, there were rumblings of discontent. There's a big screen in the train station with rolling news on it. Rolling news from Sky no less. If there's one thing that could make you throw acid in your own eyes, Sky News is it. The latest John Terry losing the England captaincy bollocks was on a loop, and apparently Joey Barton, a footballer so stupid and with an even more questionable history than John Terry, had sent some tweets on Twitter, and it was oh so controversial. And this is what passes for news! Two contemptible and thoroughly stupid idiots who've only escaped a life in the gutter by being able to kick a pig's bladder around, are doing and saying stuff, and it's being reported as if it's Moses coming down the mountain with the ten commandments. Bloody hell.
Then I spent the day on Tuesday jumping through hoops for the YHA before being told Thanks but No Thanks. On Wednesday my brain was still mashed but I tried to do some bike maintenance. I was so out of it I could barely recollect my own name by this point, and to make things worse the other two guys at Sustrans had one of those terrible radio phone ins on. People debating whether they should have to sell their homes to go into care, and then someone on advising people how to save money by boiling up potato peelings to make a nutritious gloop, and telling us not to go shopping when we're hungry and that kind of wisdom from on high. I could barely stand it.
I went to Tesco on Thursday to buy some rice. I couldn't believe the vast array of goods on display, and what was worse I couldn't take listening to people trying to decide between the various brands on offer. Then a man at the checkout was discussing the ridiculousness of pricing 240 tea bags at less than the packs of 180. I started to feel like I was going mental.
All this stuff about choice and degrees of satisfaction seems superfluous to me now. India reduced my expectations, until I was happy to get something. Every day I got a meal and a place to stay, and that was enough. It was hard to find shops, but the joy that can be felt from finding a big jar of porridge or some chocolate milk is beyond description. Seeing Dean running out into the road after three days in the wilderness and gleefully showing me butter and cheese and Snickers bars, and pointing excitedly to sliced bread in the window. The average Tesco shopper does not understand such feelings.
On Friday I got a letter from Simon Bailes Peugeot asking me what I thought of the MOT service I got a month ago. How satisfied was I with about 20 separate aspects of the service I got. I found this bewildering. I wanted an MOT, I got an MOT. Job done. I was satisfied. With time in India in the bank, this sort of feedback seemed nuts. I didn't get a letter from the Hotel Godawari in Roorkee asking me how satisfied I was with the service there. The young man in the orange hoodie who brought me my dinner and the older guy who spoke English and who talked to us a bit, we had a transaction in that particular time and space, and then we moved on. I smiled and gave them a tip. They seemed happy. It was in the moment. If I'm honest I found it slightly confusing that I couldn't tell who the staff were because they had no names badges or other corporate wear on, and the sound of a guy hitting a doorframe with a hammer while I was ordering might have normally been a bit off-putting, but this was India. I took things at face value, and I got a meal and a bed for the night, and that was good enough. And the next morning I moved on.
The same thing happened with Orange on Friday aswell. I rang them up to ask them a question about how much it costs to send texts to India. They answered my question, but then they wanted me to fill a survey in on how they'd answered my question. What do you mean? I said. I asked a question, you answered it. I didn't know the answer, now I do. That was the entirety of it. I don't want to make a sitcom out of it.
Since I got home, I haven't had the telly on for 5 days, then on Saturday I broke my duck by putting the Six Nations Rugby on. When I first switched the telly on, I accidentally turned a programme on where some yuppies were wanting to take that fantastic house they've got in the city, and trade it in for an even more fantastic house in the country. The smug bastards. Perhaps next week, instead of Escape to the Country we'll see them starring in an episode of Escape to the Underpass, where they get to swap their quarter of a million pad in Central London for a night sleeping under a rickshaw by the underpass at New Delhi railway station, next to a pile of dogs? What's their budget? Nil?
The cold weather hasn't helped. I feel like I'm living in a fridge, which is harder to take, because my sunburn has started to peel. And every time I fall asleep I dream of Delhi and the road to Rishikesh. I had a nightmare about having to build a wheel somewhere on NH58 a few nights ago. The good news is I keep waking up next to Ruth, and I feel like we're laughing more than before I left. Some of this is because I was so stressed with the packing before I left, and getting myself in a tangle choosing what to take, she told me today if I'd missed my flight she would have sent me in a taxi. Apparently I was lucky not to have one of the many bikes I was considering taking wrapped round my head I was being so infuriatingly indecisive.
In case all of this sounds really negative, it's not all bad. I am loving being back in the beautiful English countryside, I feel lucky to live where I live, to have the people in my life that I have, and to have a nice home. It's an adjustment that's all.
Then today I put the telly on for the second time, and before I watched the latest Six Nations instalment (another thing which makes me proud to be British) I watched Harry Hill's TV Burp. And I laughed, and laughed. And I remembered another reason why it's great to be British. It's because we're good at laughing at ourselves. We're good at pointing at our own pomposity and seriousness, and ridiculing the absurdity of it all.
And I realised that's the greatest gift I got from my India trip. I remembered to laugh at myself. Because taking myself seriously doesn't work. All that happens is that I get myself tied up in knots. And a lot of the things I worry about are laughable, and so I laughed at those things, and at myself. And this afternoon I wore a buff around my forehead and danced around with Ruth to a song by the Specials called Do Nothing. We had a laugh and a sing along with the words
'Nothing ever changes, oh no, I'm just living in a life without meaning'.
And even if that were true, that my life is without meaning, and that nothing ever changes, I'm still grateful for it. I'm thankful for all the chances I've had, to do things, and to go places, that some can only dream of. When I think back to being an oddity on the road to Rishikesh, being stared at by people who maybe live their entire lives within a tiny geographical area, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see my own country and others, both from inside and out.
And when I reflect on last year, I think I was a lot like India Guy from Rishikesh, having a tantrum because I'd got a Chicken Sizzler when I'd ordered something else. Being disappointed. I was like that in Scotland, and in Wales, and on my York to Durham ride, and on some other bikes rides I went on. I spent so long moaning that I didn't get what I wanted, that I forgot to be grateful for what I got.
I spent so long reviewing my experiences, as if they were a customer survey, and worrying about degrees of satisfaction, that I forgot to say thank you. Thank you for my life and everything in it. For everything I've got, and everything I've had.
And so if I learned nothing else from India, except to remember to laugh at myself and say thank you for things, it was still worth going.
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