Pandemic gives Americans world travel blues

The pandemic continues to disappoint and ruin plans in so many ways, mostly not health related.  Along with job loss; reduced income or no income; no health insurance; homelessness; online work and online schooling; postponed or canceled surgeries and specialized physician check ups; and hundreds of state and county fairs, annual conventions, entertainment and concert tours along with New York’s Broadway season canceled for the year—Europe has banned travelers from the U.S.  Just when my husband and I were contemplating a trip to Austria, Europe won’t have us.  The U.S. has done such a poor job of controlling the virus.  And we’re from Texas, an international laughingstock due to crowded bars and partiers sans masks and social distancing.  We of all Americans will not be permitted entry into Europe.

Being a Texas native, I just assumed the virus would not survive our hot weather, which is at least half the year.  But I was wrong.  I also thought the airline industry could use the business.  Remembering the aftermath of 9/11, I wanted to support the critically vital yet economically crippled industry.  Instead, this year I only have memories of traveling the world.  And here they are!

India January 2013

Namaste, y’all!  Of all the places in the world, India was the one country I most wanted to see.  Not sure why, other than I’m a big Beatles’ fan and they spent time in India, and George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, was deeply influenced by the country and Eastern religion.  So, OM and peace. 

While working on a master’s degree in liberal studies, a professor was forming a Study Abroad course to India.  ‘Yeah, right. Like I’m going to India,’ I thought sarcastically to myself.  But … the words that flowed from my mouth were: “I always wanted to go to India!”  I studied the proposal, noting January is the best time to go there, and I would be with colleagues and a professional tour guide.  Then I researched traveling to India and found disconcerting points to consider.  At the time, polio and many other diseases were still communicable; Western women are considered promiscuous and may be hit on or attacked; beggars should be ignored; tourists should not wear jewelry; travelers are advised to avoid street food, tap water, ice and even fresh fruits and vegetables due to possible contamination.  Tourists are cautioned to brush teeth with bottled water.  A travel nurse advised a series of vaccines including Hepatitis A & B, Tetanus, Typhoid and rabies. Monkeys, dogs and other animals freely roam India and potentially can bite.

Undaunted, however, I signed up for the Multicultural Teambuilding Course: Study Abroad India!  The flight was 14 hours, landing in Dubai briefly to hop a connecting flight to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India.  Meeting our tour guide and with luggage in hand, our group walked out of the airport and into throngs of somber Indians awaiting arrival of loved ones.  The evening air smelled of ancient mold and modern chemicals.  My eyes burned the entire trip.  The tour bus would provide cold bottled water daily.  We sped off to our hotel, the driver occasionally honking along with many others winding through the busy crowded highways and busted streets.  Before entrance into the hotel, our luggage was scanned through an outdoor conveyer belt.  Meanwhile, we Americans were greeted by a female manager dressed in a customary sari.  She summarily painted a small single red dot on our foreheads, above and between the brows. 

During the mornings, we attended lectures about India and the international business world then spent afternoons touring.  The adventure was through northern India’s Golden Triangle: New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.  The morning breakfast buffet was always an exotic assortment of foods, each labeled with long complex words too hard to remember or pronounce.  For lunch and dinner, I stuck with naan bread and tofu with curry sauce, a vegetarian diet.  By the last lecture, we learned that India’s billion people celebrate millions of gods by lots of festivals featuring a wide array of foods.  We witnessed a couple of large weddings, complete with painted elephants and Bollywood music.

While traveling India, I found the people to be warm, smiling and cordial, always greeting with prayer hands and a bow while saying “Namaste,” a Sanskrit word that means “God in me sees God in you.”  And they expected you to repeat the customary greeting back to them, which I did.  The many tourist sites we visited, however, were met upfront with a crowd of beggars, male teens who could not walk because they had polio or other crippling deformities.  With their skinny legs folded, they held their hands in back on the ground and pushed their torsos forward, stopping by balancing one hand in back and the other outstretched while they asked, “To give, ma’am?  To give?”  This was heartbreaking.  In fact, in New Delhi hundreds of small short tents are set up right beside the highways.  They are the housing for migrant workers who maintain a centuries-old tradition of living in tents to move where there is work.  In the early morning hours, these groups warmed themselves around small fires on the side of busy streets.

India’s Taj Mahal in Agra was the most breathtaking vision.  It was made with crystals and appears to glow from afar.  The historic intricately designed white mosque is guarded with armed police, and pictures are forbidden inside the tomb, plus visitors must slip a pair of booties over shoes which are not permitted inside a mosque tomb.

Lasting Impressions: The poverty.  We Americans are so blessed beyond measure.  Masses of people who appear to be ill.  Blue skies yet burning eyes.  Overcrowded and littered streets with bustling vehicles and the occasional lone dog walking alongside traffic, even curling up to sleep.  Men urinating on the streets.  Monkeys running and jumping shrub to shrub.  Squatters, toilets at ancient tourist sites.  Colorfully decorated elephants walking down mountains, guided to weddings in the cities.  Business vehicles painted to personify female gods.  Business buildings with large statues of Ganesh or a mural of a blue Krishna.  The symbol for OM and swastikas everywhere.  Camels hitched to low trailers loaded with cargo, slowly clopping along busy streets beside speeding automobiles, small motorcycles and Tuk Tuk taxis.  The smell of Ylang Ylang.  The white pentagon temple celebrating all five world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  The serenity of India’s people as well as animals.  Tears when first seeing the Taj Mahal.  Tears and prayers for the beggars.

 England July 2013

My lucky year for world travel continued with an opportunity for a required graduate writing course: historic fiction that featured a Study Abroad course to World War II sites in England and France!  The nonstop flight was only nine hours.  We arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport in the early morning and met Yvonne, our tour guide.  Her parents met during the war, one French, the other British.  She spoke both languages.  Outside the airport were hundreds of bicycles on racks.  Our travel bus took us briskly through a two-lane highway with heavily wooded terrain, thick tall trees abutting pavement on both sides.  Trying to look ahead made me drowsy.  Then there were the roundabouts, felt at every intersection.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Our first stop was Oxford: a fairy tale village where people still live in thatched-roof cottages that surround the world renown university along with churches and graves dating back to the 10^th century.  The early morning air in July was cool bliss.  The sun came out around 4 a.m. and set after 10 p.m.  Standing beneath a shade tree was noticeably cooler, something I’ve yet to experience all my summers in Texas.

London is a world-class city compared to picturesque rural Oxford yet charming with tall Victorian buildings renovated for modern business and apartments.  We attended outdoor theatre at The Globe, sipped wine while walking along the Thames River, and toured Winston Churchill’s war bunker.     

Then a fellow Beatles’ fan and I walked to Abbey Road to see the area of the famous studio where the Beatles recorded their albums.  First, we ventured into London’s complex subway system called The Tubes then walked a few blocks to Abbey Road.  At the time, the entire area in front of the studio entrance was pasted with lots of graffiti, thanking the Beatles for their music and many endearing sentiments to John Lennon.  Fans had written messages on every section of concrete walls, bricks, cement block posts and even iron rods on the gates.  The studio sets quite a way from the graffitied entrance.  The graffiti was mind boggling and then to think the government allowed it.  Lots of tourists, individually and in groups of four, continuously stopped traffic for photos while walking the exact spot as the Beatles did for the cover of Abbey Road—including me.

Lasting Impressions:  Flower boxes outside every window house, apartment and business.  Commerce closing early evening, leaving open only the pubs and night venues.  No convenience stores.  Free museums.  Fish & chips served with peas.  Baked beans for breakfast.  Feeling completely at home, no doubt from ancestral DNA.  Walking alone in Oxford at night and feeling safe.  All the Beatle fans from around the world hanging out along Abbey Road.  British charm.

We left England via the ‘Chunnel,’ the massive train system that crosses the English Channel to northern France and includes deep underwater sections.

France July 2013

We stayed in the village of Bayeux, where businesses and apartments still fly weathered flags representing WWII Allied Nations. At dusk we walked along cobbled roads and slender streets deep into the town center to find restaurants. The next day we visited the Museum of the Battle of Normandy, with none of us leaving with a dry eye.  We drove through the French countryside and ate baggette sandwiches at a seaside amusement park. Then we walked the beaches of Normandy where today children play freely. Several of us collected sand from the beach. Later we toured the Normandy American Cemetery—where gusts of warm ocean breeze caressed each of us standing together high upon the cliffs and slowing turning to view the cemetery’s somber panorama.  Graves are divided by U.S. state and eternally guarded by trees from the deceased’s specific home.

We left for Paris, caught a light summer rain, and crossed the Seine River that snakes through the city.  Unfortunately, at the last minute we were bounced from a hotel adjacent to the Eiffel Tower.  Instead, we drove right past the massive iron structure and continued clear across the city to a European micro motel.

Lasting Impressions: (Paris smells like urine.  Everywhere.)  The French prefer you to speak French.  People standing very close to each other in lines.  Body funk, theirs not mine.  Hot hotel rooms. Political graffiti throughout Paris on statues, steps, buildings, park benches.  Billboards and music videos with topless women.  Intimidated by language and an unfamiliar and unfriendly city.    

Ireland July 2017

Hoping to spot a wee fairy or sprite, and because I learned my ancestral DNA is one quarter Irish, I joined a tour group to southern Ireland along the western Atlantic coast.  Sites included the community of Kerry where the bustling downtown area featured a middle school band playing American pop tunes.  We ate at a pub and sang along with the nightly entertainer, a male singer with an Irish brogue who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and included a couple of American songs by John Denver.  We drove 100-plus miles along the Ring of Kerry, riding up through rugged mountains so high the clouds shadowed the terrain.  The sites were rugged slate cliffs, cottages, and the Atlantic coast.  On to the Cliffs of Moher, we walked up steep slippery slate against strong winds and mist.  An umbrella is quickly ruined and simply out of place in Ireland. From the top of the cliffs, the view was thrilling combined with the feel and the smell of the sea crashing onto the cliffs.  Later we toured ancient portals, areas marked and preserved by the government.  The portals were thought to have been used by the ancient Irish many centuries ago to step into another dimension to seek guidance through life.

One night we dined inside an early medieval castle for a banquet whereby our only utensil was a knife.  The following day, we roamed around castle ruins on the way to Dublin.   In the city we saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College.  The book produced by monks dates back at least 800 years and tells the story of Jesus mixed with Celtic legends, beliefs and symbols.  On my own, I toured the Whiskey Museum, interestingly located across from the college.  I learned whiskey is derived from an Irish word that means “water of life.”  At the tour’s end, we tasted four whiskeys.  The taste is … not for me.  The tour concluded with dinner and a live performance called Celtic Nights featuring authentic dancing to acoustic instruments, notably wooden spoons.

Lasting Impressions

The Emerald Isle, green foliage everywhere.  Their love of music; even the green flag carries a harp.  A folk musician at every stop: guitar, banjo, accordion.  Playing along on an enormous community drum. The Irish love of American pop music; even a taxi driver sang along to 1970s pop songs from his radio.  Fairy trees. Hearty meals (thick seafood soup with rustic Irish bread).  Dublin’s Poetry Corner and the city’s marquee celebrating the country’s famous music entertainers and writers.  Medieval Mead (honey wine).  The ever-changing weather.  Land of red heads.  No snakes.  St. Patrick’s encircled Christian cross everywhere.