The struggle

Today I am struggling. Struggling with everything, The routine of not having a routine is a difficult routine to get into. I wake up - or more accurately am woken up by street noises that pierce even the quiet haven of my earplugs - and have nothing to do. Or nothing I have to do. There are new sights and sites to be found everywhere I look, but I'm, not obliged to visit them. No-one is there to make me see a temple and ensure I photograph it properly, especially as I already have many such images locked in the jewel box of memory that is my camera.

Yet somehow, an invisible, intangible thread connects me to these places, tugging me gently, imperceptibly towards them. Its tautness teases me with black thoughts that many travellers find hard to resist: 'What if you miss something? What if this is the one sight that will awaken you as no other has done? What if there is Truth and Yourself residing in that crumbled and dirty building and you miss it? You cannot capture it elsewhere. Its essence is fleeting, like a candle offering floating on the Ganges. One moment its light is there, flame-bright, the next it is gone out of sight. If you don't go you will not be complete.'

I know this to be rubbish, of course I do, but still a pressure to visit, to see, to experience weighs on me. Each fresh morning in a fresh place (in this case Udaipur, said to be India's most romantic city), I find myself daunted and taunted by my thread.

But I am beginning to know myself and my moods. If I give myself a good talking to and convince myself that I might enjoy it when I'm there, strangely I usually do. But if I go out of a completely pointless sense of duty, rather than desire, you can be sure I don't enjoy it. Suddenly the dirt is too much; the other tourists too clamouring; the demands for photos from men I could be mother to, too much to bear.

I feel a seed of anger inside me. It splits and its leaves uncurl and grow inside me looking for the light. I snap a curt 'No' at requests for, 'Just one snap', and I rail at paying a pittance for a man to 'guard' my worthless flip-flops when I enter a temple. I mist of anger stops me seeing the beauty of a carving, it blocks from me the ability to feel the power, history and importance of the place. I'm just not there. I can no longer connect.

And this 'fatigue' extends beyond temples. I also find myself sometimes unable to participate in people. So far, they have been what has filled me with wonder and warmth for India and travel in general. The India I meet on the street, on a train, in a cafe, even in a shop trying to sell me something. This India flares in me a fire of joy, of contentment that can rarely be achieved by the cold stone of a temple.

But some days, People Fatigue envelopes me like a thick stifling blanket I can't unwind from. On those days, I feel my visibility like a disability. The stares annoy, the calls of 'Hallao!, hallao!' are an irritant, like a grain of sand in my sandal I can't rid myself of. Human interaction with the fresh day's fresh crop of characters and crazies is the last thing I want or need.

I close the door on them with a large pair of sunglasses to hide my frustration and a deep frown like the Third Eye to ward off the bad spirits that circle me, waiting for a chink in my disposition that will let them in.

But better even than this is retreat. I have a lie-in, willfully missing the best time of day for memory capture,as the sun swells in the sky and the fresh early light is gone. Or I sit in a cafe and watch from a distance but don't participate. Or I write.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling. But as I am alone with this feeling, it falls to you dear reader; dear home-sweet home reader; dear I-miss-you-terribly reader, to help me out, by allowing me to outpour this lake of emotion. Here, far, far from you, under the hot sun and unknowing faces, my words will quickly evaporate it and carry away it's mist.

To write is to understand, to write is to erase, to drain the sore that causes pain. And once it is done, without me realising, I am healed, renewed and ready to connect again.