Ignorance or Experience

Standing at the rail of the ferry looking north to the city unfolding in the distance I was jubilant. We had made it. Every day someone would tell us what we were trying to do was not possible. A Swiss guy had warned us they would say this, but insisted it was possible. So, we persevered and 5 days, 7 boats (wooden ketch, canoe, hull you name it we took it), a couple nights sleeping in coconut groves we cycled the coast from Goa to just south of Mumbai. We had learned while cycling in India that if you are confident and insistent enough you can usually find someone to join your band wagon and get what you want.

Back to standing at the rail. We were approaching the Gateway to India, the monument that in earlier times people would first see as they arrived in Mumbai, when a young, well dressed woman started chatting with us. She asked the standard questions of where were we from, where have we been and then where were we going. When we told her we were going to take the train to Rajasthan, she became very concerned for us as we were going to be passing through Gujarat.

"Have you not heard?"

"Heard what?" We had been sleeping in coconut groves and backwater villages for a week.

"There has been a tragic clash between a group of muslims and hindus. A train returning from a holy place was forcibly stopped and 58 passengers, mainly women, children and elderly, were burned alive in the train car. Since then the hindus have retaliated and now hindus are killing muslims, pulling them from their houses and burning them alive in the street. Everything is shut down, people are told they are not to leave their houses. It is very dangerous. You should not go."

This would explain why we hadn't eaten yet that day, she was right, everything had been shut down. After some discussion, we decided to continue on anyways since we weren't prepared to stay in Mumbai (after stories of lice in the guesthouses). We were also pretty confident that we would not be mistaken for either a hindu or a muslim. By the time we reached Udaipur, Rajasthan in the evening, after passing through Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, where the riots were the worst, we were strung out.

So, when we collected our bikes from the train, the police told us that we were not allowed to leave, we were to stay at the train station for the night, we refused. We persisted through 3 or 4 police check points and completely empty streets. People were poking their heads out their doors once in a while, but otherwise the city was shut down. The nervous energy in the air was palpable. And it stayed that way for 3 days.

In the end, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were brutally killed. 223 more people were reported missing. The pictures and stories were horrific. And it was those pictures and stories that reached home.

This experience, in one way, led us a month later to travel in to Nepal where the civil war between the government and the Maoists was wrecking havoc throughout the country. We knew what was in the news and researched the Travel warnings from the Canadian, British and French governments and had previously decided not to go. But then talking to other travelers that had just arrived from Nepal changed our minds.

We ended up putting more stock in to what the travelers were saying than the news and government warnings and set off. Trekking the Annapurna circuit the only evidence we saw of the conflict were locals desperate for your business. The news and travel warnings had kept thousands of others away.

It was a month in to our trip before the conflict became real. We were heading out to start our second trek just in time to miss the country-wide strike (it literally shuts down the country) that the Maoists had initiated. Within hours of leaving Kathmandu our bus was being escorted by trembling kids with guns in Ked sneakers, aka - the government army. They were walking along side the bus as it crawled along the valley towards a bridge that had been bombed hours earlier by the Maoists. The locals and bus drivers seemed undeterred by the gapping hole in the bridge. They did take the precaution of asking us to get off and walk across while the bus crept empty to the other side. Looking up the lush valley walls, I could see why the kids were trembling; we were sitting ducks. Within minutes, we all hopped back on bus and kept going, leaving the kids behind.

Looking back, our decisions to continue on in these conflicts seem to be based on a massive dose of ignorance, naivety and mixed with the stubborn righteousness of two kids in their 20s on an adventure of a lifetime. But I learned a lot from that about what makes the news and the travel warnings. One is to sell a story, sometimes sensationalized, and other times very accurate for what is happening in that very spot at that very moment. The other is to cover their asses, so if something happens to you they can say, "Well, we told you not to go there."

When I read the news, the travel warnings and the daily summary of insurgent incidents (particularly in the Kabul area) in Afghanistan I understand my (and your) apprehension. What prevents me from being concerned is knowing I just need to get on the ground and see what it's like. I don't want to be one of thousands that stay away when I am willing and able to join in and help in the locally motivated effort to get safe water to the people.

And now with no more sleeps to go, I am packed (well almost), ready and, instead of apprehension, I have butterflies of nervous excitement.

Next stop: Kabul.