January 15, 2024

Dumb Tourists in a Small World

Today is my birthday. Birthdays have always felt really big to me. I never could have imagined spending my 22nd birthday on the side of the road on the outskirts of Bangalore, India throwing up from food poisoning. When I left two weeks ago for India, I blew out candles on a mini cake with my parents and cried as I made my early birthday wish. I was sad to leave them, and my home, and was scared to enter such a big world of unknown. Before coming here, I thought of everything about India being really big too. India was a big foreign far-away country filled with big cultural differences, struggling with big grand challenges, home to the largest population in the world. Now that I’m here what I notice most are the small things: the small stores crammed together in small alleyways, the family of five with their three small children smooshed together on a motor bike, the many pairs of small eyes looking at us when we are stopped at a red light, and the small acts of kindness we’ve received to make us feel welcome, like the lighting of the candles at Parikrama and the tea and biscuits we are offered everywhere we go.

This weekend in Mysore, the students had our first moments away from the GCIL program. Before going to Mysore, I again was thinking about the big palace, temple, hill, zoo and Cathedral that made up the city in my mind only to later find out the city of 1.3 million people was much smaller than I expected. After arriving in Mysore, some of us went on a walk towards the palace. On the way, we had auto drivers pulling over asking if we needed a ride or wanted a tour of the old market. After politely declining, we hurried away to find the open gate into the massive palace grounds. On our walk, we found ourselves talking to the man who was walking beside us. When he told us he was one of the palace’s elephant keepers I was skeptical, but he had photos which seemed to prove it. He told us the palace was full of tourists in the morning and that we should return to the palace in the afternoon when the elephants would be out. We hopped in an auto rikshaw and asked to be brought to the market. On our way, the driver pulled over to the side of the road, parked, and opened his seat to show us a book of notes from travelers he’d given a ride to before. At this point, we knew we were in for a ride. Our trip to the market turned into a well-coordinated tour of the city. We saw the fresh fruits, vegetables, and spices in the old market where Elena took an ill-advised taste of a mysterious green paste from a bucket. The only relief from the spice was sugar being offered to her by a swarm of nearby vendors. Next stop was the wood carving workshop, then the incense and essential oil store where we learned how to make incense sticks and bought oil to bring home. The tour ended at a store selling hand-carved sandalwood elephants and silks. We get back on the auto to finally return to the palace where we started two hours ago. We asked Samir the price of the ride, and it was tenfold the original rate, but we thought it was worth it for the experience and his time. After the tour of the palace’s ornate ballrooms, courtyards, and narrow stairwells, we ran into other GCIL members at the shoe station. There we noticed everyone was carrying the same blue shopping bags. The large city full of sites to see and people to meet suddenly became very small. After sharing stories and connecting the dots, we learned that every group of GCIL students were brought on the same tour of the city by an autorickshaw driver. All throughout the evening we ran into rickshaw drivers asking if we were part of the group of students from Bangalore here for the weekend. Word seems to travel fast when a new crop of eager young tourists who lack proper bargaining skills arrive in the city.

Even though some of us may have spent more on “one of a kind” goods than we anticipated, and everyone came home from the weekend with food poisoning, we all saw more of the city than we would have otherwise at a cost of no real significance to us which supported all the figures in the well-choreographed scheme, even the so-called elephant trainer. As I was making my journey home to Bangalore, clenching my stomach in my hands, and focusing on the horizon, I thought of the auto drivers who we shared a love for the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen with, and remembered that this isn’t a big abstract place, or even a big place full of little things that grab your attention. Instead, it’s a small world, filled with shared experiences and dumb tourists you can make a dollar off.

By Lucy

Mysore Palace

Mysore markets