As COVID-19 swept from my dear China across the globe, my own life suddenly became far more interesting and restricted than I ever could have anticipated when I packed my backpack over two years ago, embarking on a dream to embrace the world.

While I do my best not to give this own life of mine any more importance to anyone else’s life on this planet, apparently some of you care to know exactly how I’m doing.

The answer is quite a mouthful, and definitely not boring, so I wrote it out and put it on the Internet.

 

 

Three days ago I was journaling in the common area of my hostel in Varanasi, India. I looked out the only window that was still allowed to be cracked open. It occurred to me that I could not even cross the street to buy a pack of chips for my gnawing hunger.

India is currently on a strictly enforced lockdown for 21 days, and in Varanasi, foreigners are easy targets for bamboo-cane-wielding police.

This city is crowded. Thanks to an overpopulation of stray cows and dogs, the narrow alleys are lined with a steady supply of fresh feces. These walking paths transform into shit-smeared gullies when it rains. Buildings are packed close together in an unformatted chaos. Electric wires hang impossibly tangled overhead. Despite lockdown, elderly men continue to wander around.

Monkeys leap from rooftop to rooftop among residential homes. Sometimes they charge in all at once. Rarely, one takes a bite of human flesh, like in the case of an unfortunate German backpacker who was here last week. Monkey hands touch all the surfaces. They are Rhesus macaques, the exact species of monkey that are vulnerable to COVID-19 and being used by scientists to study the virus.

At night, the dogs curl up in heaps of trash, the luckiest goats get blankets draped over them, and the monkeys pelt soiled diapers at your head.

To get toilet paper or a banana or some shampoo, I ask the Indian nationals staying at my hostel to go out and purchase it for me.

So why did I give up my last chance to exit India?

How did I even end up in such a socially un-distant, squalid mess?

Knowing that domestic flights would be suspended after March 24th, I had a seat on one of the last flights to Delhi. I thought I would take it, and wait in the capital city for options to reach China, where the healthcare system is experienced with COVID-19 and hospitals have a high capacity for treatment.

As counterintuitive as Vivian Logic appears, life in China is returning to normal. I have friends and family all over that country. My Chinese visa is valid for 10 years, with a sixth-month stay granted on every entry. The government would have a protocol to properly quarantine me as soon as I landed.

Of course in Delhi I could also wait for a charter flight back to the United States. But I really, truly do not feel like going back there at this time in my life. The U.S. COVID-19 outbreaks are in their earlier stages, and my home country has a horrifically broken healthcare system, with far less hospital beds per capita in comparison with China.

Just as our airport taxi arrived at our Varanasi hostel, I bailed.

All morning messages from fellow backpackers in Delhi reported there were no affordable hotels taking new check-ins. No taxis were in service. Only Embassy-approved accommodations could pick us up, and take us to a 6,000 rupee ($80) room. With international flights suspended until further notice, there was no point for me to do that to myself.

I had no plan (often my plan is exactly to have no plan), and now was not the time to show up in Delhi with no plan. I didn’t want to go to the U.S. Embassy for a flight home, and as an American citizen, the Chinese Embassy frankly wouldn’t give a shit about me.

The last two European-born hostel guests took that airport taxi and left.

Up until that moment, I was breaking apart with fear and uncertainty. My bags were packed. My friends were waiting. A tear slid its way down my right cheek.

I had to choose between the risk of having nowhere to go for weeks or months in Delhi (also known as the Ass of India¹) or giving myself some serious claustrophobia and possibly a death sentence in Varanasi (also known as the Center of the Universe). On top of it all, the police had shown up to check on the hostel.

But as I watched my friends go without me and turned back into the dark of the police-free hostel lobby, I was flushed through with peace and gratitude.

Much like the sensation of mentally letting go of something, overcoming fear is a release you can physically feel.

Note: Between the time I began drafting this post and the time I published, my European friends were flown home with a charter flight coordinated by their embassy, and China decided to close borders to incoming foreigners starting March 28th.

Believe me, I tried my best to get myself to freedom in nature.

Each time, I was so fucking close.

Today is March 27th, 2020. Day 779 of my trip.

I thought I would be on the coast of Sri Lanka, surfing for a month or two. Entering the water twice a day, building up my muscles until I can catch real waves. Reading and slugging smoothies on a peaceful beach.

My flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka was set for March 20th. My tourist visa was free, in government efforts to boost tourism after last year’s terrorist attacks. It felt like Sri Lanka wanted me as much as I wanted Sri Lanka.

Days before my flight out of India, I received an email saying my flight was cancelled. No explanation given. Several calls to airline offices in India left me very pissed. Three hours on hold with American travel agents got me a new flight to Sri Lanka, set for March 25th.

The next day, Sri Lanka’s president announced all incoming flights were to be suspended for two weeks, because travelers with COVID-19 symptoms had been evading airport screening.

I was on hold for three hours again. This time no one picked up, and sorry Chase Ultimate Rewards, but this bitch has a life to live.

I would stay in India and go north. It was a good month to head to the state of Himachal Pradesh. The Himalayas. I’d go near Dharamshala, home to His Holiness Dalai Lama. This spot was known to be a hub of creativity. Artists, musicians, and writers from around the world flock here each spring.

I forgot about surfing. My head began to spin fantasies of renting a place in the mountains. My own kitchen. One of those handy dandy little Indian pressure cookers that made raw chickpeas turn soft as butter in 25 minutes.

I would have a routine made up of yoga, trail runs, writing, and home-cooking. I would hike. A healthy and creative quarantine. A friend would join me.

Act fast act fast act fast.

My flight was booked in no time, set on March 20th. The route had two legs, with a stopover in Delhi.

I suddenly wanted this new plan more than anything else. I became attached. It was so perfect that it was too perfect. I couldn’t sleep that night.

The next day Himachal Pradesh closed itself off to all national and foreign tourists.

In response, I booked a flight from Delhi to the state of Uttarakhand. It’s still North India! Also with verdant hills, artists, creators, and places for monthly rent! There’s basically more yoga ashrams than blades of grass out there!

At 9:00pm on March 20th, I boarded the first leg of my other flight that would bring me to Delhi. Despite the final destination having been closed off to tourists, this flight was still going. Because capitalism.

Physically on the plane, minutes before take off, moments before I switched my phone to airplane mode, my friend messaged me that Uttarakhand had closed itself off to all tourists.

I tapped my fingers the entire two-hour flight to Delhi.

I was in the airport in the Ass of India now!

It felt like everything was slathered with the virus. I was washing and sanitizing my hands raw. Using my mask religiously. I had two flights that led to no freedom and no companionship. Two dead ends. The clock struck midnight.

The queue for health screening was more like a mob of people from around the world pushed against each other, half of them lacking face masks. It was exactly the opposite of how people should be organized during a pandemic. And I was in the smack middle.

How long was this going to take?

A minute later I felt a breakthrough. Literally. Suddenly the staff decided that domestic transfers didn’t need to have their temperature checked. Never mind that my plane was coming from Hyderabad, and Hyderabad was a city with confirmed COVID-19 cases.

I took some elevators and walked across the terminal to the airline ticketing offices. There I found a Caucasian male from the United States screaming at the supervisor of Air India.

“WHAT?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE NO FLIGHTS?

AMERICA. AM-ER-ICA.

NO FLIGHTS TO ANY CITY IN AMERICA? NEW YORK. CHICAGO. LOS ANGELES. NEW ORLEANS! NEW ORLEANS. NEW ORLEANS!!!!!”

The Air India supervisor wearily responded that no aircraft would be entering the United States for the next week as per advisory of the World Health Organization.

“WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? I HAVE TO WORK! I HAVE A JOB. WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO GO?

THERE IS NO WHERE TO STAY IN DELHI. THEY WON’T TAKE ME. WE ARE NOT THE SAME COLOR. SEE???”

He pointed to his arm, and then to the arm of the Air India supervisor.

I felt shame for not telling him,

“You and I are also not the same color, but Delhi hotels would reject me as they would reject you. Except they would actually accept us, because you are a lying, racist, son of a bitch.”

Instead, I held my silence, felt sick at his words ringing in my ears, and Air India told me they wouldn’t sell domestic tickets to foreigners.

At 1:00am a low-cost airline sold me a high-cost flight to Varanasi. I had already been to Varanasi. I was returning because it was the closest place I had friends. In such unsettling times, I wanted to be with people who I care about, and who care about me.

That’s all I could afford to want.

I had to switch airport terminals by taking a lengthy bus ride through the pitch dark Ass of India. After check-in, I went to the lounge and got some coffee and food out of extreme stress. I spent the rest of the night drowning in guilt and calling myself selfish and the Worst Person in the World because getting self-service food during a pandemic was a really stupid idea.

The sun came up. I was seated on a plane. With airport monitors covered in red CANCELLED’s, I could not believe it.

I charged out of the Varanasi airport.

The taxi drivers barely tried me. I jumped in my Uber. It was drizzling. I stupidly asked my driver to stop so I could check a shop for a mosquito net (my last night in Varanasi I found nine bloodsuckers in my bunk bed), which meant I had to cross a chaotic two-way street full of leery men.

As I did so, dark thoughts swirled.

Wasn’t I back in Uttar Pradesh, the state with a reputation for mob lynching if you were just rumored to have B-double E-F in your fridge? Don’t drivers in car accidents get dragged out and collectively beaten by onlookers on an unlucky day? Isn’t this India, where Indians warn me that women walking alone on a street get abducted into a car and gang raped?

So what happens to a lone Chinese woman with a mask around her neck and yoga pants on her legs if she walks out on the street?

I remembered the recent video I watched of an Asian woman wearing a mask getting assaulted by another woman on a New York train, the crowd staring and doing nothing to end things.

The store had no mosquito nets. By the time my taxi dropped me as far as cars could go, and I had walked past all the diseased dogs and humongous horned bulls, and made it through the entrance to my hostel, I was flinching from any human approach.

I shakily added myself to the hostel registry, jumped into a hot shower, and cowered on my bed.

I made it, I made it, I made it.

Familiar faces consoled me back into a human being.

I may be head over heels for India…

…but this country is random, power abusive, and inconsistent.

I’ve seen police beatings. I’ve seen complete disregard for personal space and basic hygiene. I’ve been told ‘no’ when one means ‘yes.’ ‘Maybe’ when one means ‘no.’

In India, we eat with our hands and roam barefoot (both of which I personally love). We stop at tea stalls for a cup of chai served in a glass which is hastily rinsed between customers. Facial orifices are seldom covered with a hand or elbow during coughs and sneezes.

At the time of this writing, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India was reaching 900, spread over 27 states and Union Territories.

India’s testing rate for COVID-19 is the world’s lowest, at 15 tests per million.

At 464 people per square kilometer, India is three times more densely populated than China, and over 12 times more densely populated than the United States.

There has been a decent correlation between the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people how badly a country will suffer from COVID-19 in terms of death toll. The World Health Organization recommends 5 hospital beds per 1,000 people. China had 4.3 beds per 1,000 people. Italy 3.2. The United States 2.8. In India, less than one.

This isn’t meant to alarm or scare anyone. If I wanted to do that, I’d describe the United States of America.

I have been privileged my entire 24 years of life.

I have always had safety nets and a U.S. passport to fall back on. I have always earned in American dollars. I have always had freedom of speech and expression. I have always been able to wear shorts and bikinis, and to pursue any romantic or sexual relationship I fancied.

When I was 16, I started driving my own car to high school every day. During university, if my friends and I felt like going into the mountains for a weekend of backcountry hikes and camping, we’d do it.

I have an international network of friends just a Whatsapp message away.

My life has always been so privileged that I can go as far as to say: I wouldn’t even be in such a less privileged situation today, if it weren’t for all that past privilege leading up to the present.

But today there is no way out. No more choices. International and domestic flights are frozen. For the first time in Indian Railways history, service of passenger trains has come to a full stop.

I am not looking for an exit either. I am here for the haul.

I approve of India’s swift lock down. Heard they fixin’ to turn empty trains into intensive care units, too.

Perhaps it is time, for once in my life, to experience life a little less privileged, and a little more average. Indian average. Quality of life in the hands of the State of India average.

While my First World friends post infinity pools, going for a run, doing yoga on some grass, or lounging by a good-looking lake to their stories, this time I get to be the one who can’t let myself think about what I don’t have right now.

Varanasi is far from an ideal place for sticking out a pandemic.

Currently Varanasi has one detected case of COVID-19.

I am in contact with an American couple who is also quarantined in this city. A few days ago, the owner of the flat they are renting locked them in from the outside. While a literal lock is uncalled for, in this country nothing is out of the question (except for a woman in her late 20’s to be unwed).

By Western Standards, my situation would be labeled as unacceptable, or even horrific.

We are a dozen in a three-story hostel. Two of us are young children, who joined us with their mother, the cleaning maid, because of domestic trouble back home. The kids cough a bit. Some of the staff cough. Fuck it, everyone coughs a bit.

The puppy chews my feet when I try to write. He probably coughs a bit too.

We get daily visitors. Some are managing other hostels. Some are random babajis (holy men) looking for a snack. One dude comes everyday to perform an elaborate fire prayer complete with and fresh flowers and ringing bells because apparently we have a minuscule temple tucked behind the reception desk. This morning I went downstairs and found an elderly woman sipping a cup of chai that a housemate had made her.

I could freak out about all this the way I’ve been raised to. Analyze how this puts us at higher risk for infection.

I could also do things the Indian way, which is to do my best and roll with the rest.

I want to forget Western Standards, and abolish the notion of it anyway. Isn’t that why I left that life? To be a human of this world and to, in my own words, “let life happen?”

Haven’t we seen the Western COVID-19 reaction times and medical preparedness pale in comparison to the Eastern?

Thus, by Human Standards, my situation is ridiculously comfortable.

Varanasi is far from ideal, but it is also exactly ideal.

Varanasi is home to Lord Shiva, making it India’s holiest city. Before the COVID-19 lock down, thousands of worshippers showed up for a purifying dunk in the Ganges River every day. Dead bodies that were burned on these river banks get to break the cycle of rebirth. Each soul got a straight ticket to heaven (and caused some heinous environmental damage from the 400 kilos of Himalayan wood needed to burn that body).

The cosmic energy of Varanasi has been internationally acknowledged. Backpackers agree this city makes them “feel higher vibrations.”

Varanasi is worth 3,500 years of history. Buddha gave his first sermon not far from where I am. Devout Digambar Jains roam the streets stark naked with a peacock feather duster in hand.

The Vedas say the Ganges River burst from Shiva’s head, making it the center of the Hindu universe.²

As hard as I tried to avoid it, the Center of the Universe chose me.

I have everything I need, and more.

The wifi, electricity, and water are running exceptionally well. Indian housemates ask me every day for a list of anything I want from the outside world. They have pledged to me that they will stay by my side through anything.

We have access to a rooftop terrace, yoga mats, and cushions. It’s not the cleanest stuff in the world, but in a country with rampant shanty-towns and slums, where people have their caste printed onto their national IDs, where some earn under $2 a day, a pile of mildewy cushions = pure luxury.

I haven’t opened Netflix or used much Spotify because I am constantly writing this post, but they are there for me too.

From the heavens, we receive reliable sunshine, pink sunsets, Venus, and Orion.

Shit, we’ve even got turmeric, matcha, and sweet potatoes.

I hear people say “it feels like a war” or “the world is melting down” but I know it doesn’t, and it isn’t.

Yes, I could die.

But I could’ve died when I crossed the busy street the other day, trying to inquire for a mosquito net at the supermarket.

I could’ve died two weeks ago, when I was head-butted by a bull, who gave me a bone-to-bone graze. He spared my life that day, yet left a painful warning on my left ulna for the coming days.

I could’ve died a year ago, when I was in a motor vehicle accident that totaled our car and landed it (with my friends and I inside) into a Japanese rice paddy.

I could’ve died in 2018, on any given hitchhike. Like that time my partner and I decided to hitchhike all night and I was groped on my way out of a car in the pitch dark at the Georgia-Armenia border. Or that time we decided to hitchhike into the start of a snow storm before the roads closed, walking for six kilometers in freezing temperatures, the pain in our ungloved fingers stabbing us with each step forward.

I could’ve died with every take-off and touch down in the dozens of flights I catch each year. With the wrong gulp of water or bite of food.

But I didn’t die, and my friends didn’t have to change the name of my blog, because I wasn’t meant to.

Two months ago, when cases were mainly in East and Southeast Asia, my lovely mother, who was miserably quarantined in China, called me and warned,

“If you don’t go back to Florida and your dad now, it will be too dangerous to risk contamination on flights. Global airports and connections will shut down. Forget next week. Go home now or die in India.”

A bit harsh, but point taken. Yet it didn’t feel right to stop my trip. My intuition didn’t tell me to be in the United States.

I don’t mean that I am above death, or immune to catching a serious case of COVID-19 because “things will always work out” or because I can just meditate hours of love and strength to the world or because I’m in the Center of the Universe and God and Shiva and the Mother Ganges and my tattoo will protect me.

I simply don’t expect to die from COVID-19 because my lungs work normally, my immune system functions, and the death rate for my age group is a fraction of a percent.

This is a virus, not a genocide.

Less freedom = more discipline = depth.

On the contrary to having any complaints, I am excited about my new restrictive lifestyle. Limited space means I can only do so much, giving me an opportunity to pour myself into my writing projects and yoga practice.

The extreme daytime heat will put me on an early schedule of waking at dawn to move my body. A messy kitchen with no oven means I won’t be distracted with the latest recipe that caught my eye.

My own creative potential is humming within me as I take on my newfound discipline, and I have always thrived under self-imposed discipline.

My shoulders are thanking me for a break from double-loading them with front and back packs. My gut is thanking me for having a schedule, and for all the oats and homemade vegetables it’s about to receive.

Staying put gives me stability, and TIME. Time for reaching out to other Americans still in India, and for answering any questions about solo international travel (message me!).

Time for meditation and spiritual pondering. I feel very close to God these days, and now I can further explore that.

When there’s no way out, go in.

I learned more about human nature in the last three months…

…than six years of Rainbows and Unicorns Backpacking could have ever taught me.

With friends and family living in various parts of China, I have been following COVID-19 for months. I’m exhausted.

From trying to share information, and from fact-checking. From the disparities between languages, and from To Mask Or Not To Mask.

From numbers.

From discrimination and racist remarks towards Asians.

From Varanasi locals taking one look at foreigners and turning to the rest of the street, screeching,

“CORONA CORONAAA! CORONA CORONAAAA! CORONAVIRUSSS!”

From hoping my cousin with an autoimmune deficiency is alright, and from reading the heartbreaking plea from my favorite food blogger to take things seriously.

From dismissal as just China’s problem since everything is under control in our neighborhood, to full-blown hysteria and hoarding, shameless prioritizing of the global economy, and belittling the loss of human life.

And from just minutes ago when I learned that a friend of mine in his 70’s is COVID-19 positive. The very first case I personally know.

It’s hitting me hard. Deep.

I guess this is how you know.

This is how you know the truth in us all.

The travelers who said they’d stay are gone. The ones who remain are doing everything they can to help anyone they can.

You really learn a lot about the people you thought you knew, the values of your government, and yourself in the face of a pandemic.

I fully understood that I am my own home when I watched 95% of the backpackers pack up and return to their countries, and I chose India.

I now know that when I said I was fully ready to embrace the whole world and everything that came with it, I meant it. That wherever I might be, I’d do things the local way.

I fully support and respect any foreigner who decided it was time to quit their international ventures and go home. It’s difficult and scary to find a flight and pass through airports these days. They were courageous and prudent.

I didn’t feel like I had anywhere to go. The path of my trip, with all its unexpected twists, is home. Households in China have my grandparents in their 80’s, my mother said stay away, and my father in the United States said,

“Now that travel isn’t possible, isn’t this a sign that it’s time to come back start school?”

By “school,” he meant American medical school, which takes over a year to apply to and $200,000 to attend. Clever of him to leave that out.

I guess this is how you know you’d rather risk catching and surviving the virus than risk losing your mind.

When I set out for the world, I accepted that anything goes.

Let’s not pretend that we didn’t know that this was coming. As the global population skyrocketed towards 20 billion, an outbreak of some new strain of some shit was going to happen sooner or later. COVID-19 is not the last.

My choice involves uncertainty and risk, but I am happy to stop moving so I don’t expose myself to any more communities. I’m ready to sleep for another few weeks to the orchestrated barking of street dogs, to defend myself from fang-baring monkeys, to fold my conscious inward.

I get it. I’m supposed to be here. Maybe even needed here.

Namaste Varanasi, you are my Borsalino Hat Test. I will prepare for the worst and give what I can.

I don’t have to be a doctor to be without borders. 

I close with two favorite quotes.

Both are from Shantaram³ and very close to me right now. The first has been my daily mantra for staying sane over my past three months of public transport and solo travel in this country:

“Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win.”

As for the second? Well, you’ll just have to come by some day and feel it for yourself:

“That’s how we keep this crazy place together—with the heart. Two hundred fuckin’ languages, and a billion people. India is the heart. It’s the heart that keeps us together. There’s no place with people like my people, Lin. There’s no heart like the Indian heart.”

1. Credits to my savage Syrian hostel-mate.

2. Online sources also cite a mysterious “Mt. Meru” as the Center of the Hindu Universe.

3. For any idle spirits during this Stay Home season, consider Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Now that’s some based-on-truth, plot-twisting, heart-gripping storytelling.