My ever present desire to see something new lead me to see the beautiful and less beautiful images of the country I've visited. But it was the later I've learned most off. Walking the well mark trails makes you feel safe and stable, but what's it like to go down an unmarked path? First steps are hard and fear is our biggest enemy usually just behind your shoulder, while you're going into the unknown. After a few dozen kilometres of the walked trail the burden slowly lifts and the step becomes firmer. You start to enjoy travel and new experience and that's how it should be.
The less pleasant images are for me the circumstances in which some of the people live. Thirst and hunger are their constant companions and they are in an ever ongoing battle for a piece of food. I've seen such misery and got to know people in it, who were still looking forward to each new day. Hope for a better tomorrow gives you new strength. Interactions with such people marked my view of life. These people thought me many things, without many words and advice. The awareness set in that my experience and revelations are my biggest teacher.
After that long gone year, I've picked up my stuff and headed for India again. The land was attracting me like a magnet. I've realized the trip will be anything but a luxurious odyssey. Humidity, smell of burning, many disfigured people, fire in middle of the street, riding a taxi without its vital functions that I'll help the driver push to the sidewalk as it starts letting smoke out. And the night's not over yet! I get too tired and a small family with four members invites me to their home no bigger than 8 square metres. I'm ever so grateful to them and lay down in my sleeping bag. It's better than sleeping in the street. That was the beginning of my two month travel of India.
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The mixture of rich and terrible poverty you can be seen everywhere in this colourful land. Walking across the mighty Mumbai offers everything, from tall skyscrapers with latest IT development, luxurious shopping malls and much more, right down to slums that were a completely new world to me, but a very real world. Millions of people live in slums in impossible conditions. There's not health care there, no education and no warm meals… there's not even running drinking water, there just isn't anything there but poverty.
Every time my day would start out on the left foot, with messy hair or a broken nail, spilled coffee in the kitchen… I get mad at myself, for I should begin the day with awareness and gratefulness. The world is changing and we're changing with it, as well as our values and experiences do.
Marijana Meško
