Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Often, it just takes a little bit of faith, hope, and love, for us to see that a broken plan
doesn't mean a broken dream. It just means another path will open up.
I arrived in Istanbul and went straight to the airport, meeting up with Mehmet's contact
to begin the arrangements for the plane and to have the bike crated and expedited to its
new destination: India! I sat in my seat—a far cry from first class, but far safer than riding
Kindness One across Iran. I looked down at the world below. If flowers can grow through
concrete, love can surely sprout in violence. There was no way to keep it down. Because
“these three things remain: faith, hope, and love,” and Paul was right: The greatest of these
is love.
* * *
Ever since I was a child, I had dreamed of seeing India. It was probably all those Rudyard
Kipling stories, which made me think it was filled with elephants and monkeys and boys
raised in the wild. But as I grew older, the dream changed. I no longer imagined that I
would be running through the jungle next to a tiger. I dreamed that I would be riding
through it on a motorbike. I thought that in India I might meet God.
On my arrival in Delhi, the first thing that hit me was the heat. Humid. Powerful. Over-
whelming, 120-degree heat. The second thing: the poverty. It was gut-wrenching poverty,
the type where emaciated children begged with dirty fingers and whole families slept in the
streets, in homes made out of cardboard.
As I stepped out of the airport, I thought I would be confronted with color and spice, and
instead I was hit with unspeakable sadness. How was it possible that so many could have
so little?
Once I got into the city, I parked Kindness One and began to explore on foot. Children
cried out to me, “Meester! Meester!” hoping to get just a rupee from me. For the first time
on this trip, I was embarrassed to be without money. Sure, I had seen homeless people in
Turkey, in Greece, in America, but nothing like this. How could I come to India with no
money to give? How could I ask its people for help when I should be the one offering it?
I turned down a quiet street and away from the busy road filled with honking buses and
scooters. The sidewalk had been turned to rubble by the trees growing underneath, the roots
breaking up the concrete, making an uneven path down the narrow street.
I saw three “Westerners” (which I quickly found out was the word used for all white
people in India) standing outside a building. I walked up only to discover it was an ashram.
