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On the 30th, Ralph, Yuri and I were the first ones to leave the group. We took our taxi right after dinner the night before.
Our last supper with the other members was quite intense for many reasons: first, we were rushing; then, we still had our amazing day at the Ellora caves in mind, which only seemed to make time even go faster and finally, we were very sad to leave our companions obviously.
After a few chapattis and hugs, I crossed the door path with a few tears below my eyes, and no, they had nothing to do with the chapatti...
We then proceeded into the taxi. The driver was a Baba-lover residing in Meherabad. He was very nice and most especially, very cautious! He had a brand new Renault/Dacia Logan and I remember how symbolic it was for me to sit in a French car, thinking "one step closer"... We were about to spend 5 hours in it to get to Mumbai, slowly leaving our Baba-oriented world, places and friends behind us...at least we thought so. While most rick-shaws and taxis are usually decorated with goddesses, saints, movie stars and brand logos, this one had a picture of Meher Baba at the center of the dashboard. So it somewhat helped us maintaining our faith as we were going through our last hours on night-time Indian road traffic...
We all started appreciating our driver's cautiousness even more once the road at one point in particular, when he showed us the reason why he decided to slow down, dramatically increasing the distance between us and the truck in front. We did not really understand why he did that until he raised his arm, started unfolding his fingers and as if he was pointing at the stars, said with laughter "look!".
It took me a second or two before I understood what there was to see but as soon as I saw it, I was very grateful that he had much better reflexes than I did! The truck in front of us was randomly dropping pretty big stones which seemed to pop out of nowhere.
He had been stalking that truck for quite some time, ready to overpass it until he realized he was driving behind a pop-corn machine on wheels that was creating many opportunities to squash the car and us with it.
We finally made it to Mumbai, arriving in a luxury hotel...lobby. We decided to stay in the lobby and try to get some sleep there before going to the airport the next morning until we realized that we were allowed the comfy chairs or sofas but just three small chairs right next to the exit. We had the most expensive tea and chai of our journey (and the worst one, to me).
There was a night club in the hotel as well so were seeing people coming in and out. It was a classy place for wealthy people and that's where it became overwhelmingly apparent that money does not bring happiness. Those people had a lot of common characteristics with westerners, but not the best ones. They had absolutely nothing to do with the people we had been seeing for the last 2 weeks and a half. I was no longer in India to me...
We finally got into the Mumbai airport, as Yuri pointed out, it was a sterile, sad place to be in, so instead of enjoying the sight of Indian people, as I had done throughout the entire journey, I decided to read the newspaper. I grabbed the first one I could find, opened it and read on the first page: "Mumbai airport on high terrorist alert". I thought, "Yeah, right". I remembered why I did not miss reading newspapers during our journey...
The inevitable eventually happened, we had to get on our flight and say good-bye to our dear companion Ralph...
Our last supper with the other members was quite intense for many reasons: first, we were rushing; then, we still had our amazing day at the Ellora caves in mind, which only seemed to make time even go faster and finally, we were very sad to leave our companions obviously.
After a few chapattis and hugs, I crossed the door path with a few tears below my eyes, and no, they had nothing to do with the chapatti...
We then proceeded into the taxi. The driver was a Baba-lover residing in Meherabad. He was very nice and most especially, very cautious! He had a brand new Renault/Dacia Logan and I remember how symbolic it was for me to sit in a French car, thinking "one step closer"... We were about to spend 5 hours in it to get to Mumbai, slowly leaving our Baba-oriented world, places and friends behind us...at least we thought so. While most rick-shaws and taxis are usually decorated with goddesses, saints, movie stars and brand logos, this one had a picture of Meher Baba at the center of the dashboard. So it somewhat helped us maintaining our faith as we were going through our last hours on night-time Indian road traffic...
We all started appreciating our driver's cautiousness even more once the road at one point in particular, when he showed us the reason why he decided to slow down, dramatically increasing the distance between us and the truck in front. We did not really understand why he did that until he raised his arm, started unfolding his fingers and as if he was pointing at the stars, said with laughter "look!".
It took me a second or two before I understood what there was to see but as soon as I saw it, I was very grateful that he had much better reflexes than I did! The truck in front of us was randomly dropping pretty big stones which seemed to pop out of nowhere.
He had been stalking that truck for quite some time, ready to overpass it until he realized he was driving behind a pop-corn machine on wheels that was creating many opportunities to squash the car and us with it.
We finally made it to Mumbai, arriving in a luxury hotel...lobby. We decided to stay in the lobby and try to get some sleep there before going to the airport the next morning until we realized that we were allowed the comfy chairs or sofas but just three small chairs right next to the exit. We had the most expensive tea and chai of our journey (and the worst one, to me).
There was a night club in the hotel as well so were seeing people coming in and out. It was a classy place for wealthy people and that's where it became overwhelmingly apparent that money does not bring happiness. Those people had a lot of common characteristics with westerners, but not the best ones. They had absolutely nothing to do with the people we had been seeing for the last 2 weeks and a half. I was no longer in India to me...
We finally got into the Mumbai airport, as Yuri pointed out, it was a sterile, sad place to be in, so instead of enjoying the sight of Indian people, as I had done throughout the entire journey, I decided to read the newspaper. I grabbed the first one I could find, opened it and read on the first page: "Mumbai airport on high terrorist alert". I thought, "Yeah, right". I remembered why I did not miss reading newspapers during our journey...
The inevitable eventually happened, we had to get on our flight and say good-bye to our dear companion Ralph...
This symbolizes the end of my journey in India, but definitely not the end of my experience started by India.
-Aurélien
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